"Für
Sie ist der Krieg vorbei!"orThe
Story of The White L for LoveMichael
D. Weber
copyright 2012 - 2017
for original text
(revised: November 30, 2017)Insignia of the
15th
Army Air Force

The
two aircraft shown
above are from the 460th Bomb Group, 763rd Bomb
Squad as is evident from the tail markings which designate the 460th
Bomb Group, while the yellow fuselage letters and engine cowls indicate
the 763rd Bomb Squad. All four bomb squads in this bomb group
had
the same yellow and black tail markings but used different color
letters and engine cowls to differentiate their squad. The
760th
used blue markings, the 761st used red markings, and the 762nd used
white markings. These aircraft also bear the Black Panther
insignia or nose art of the 460th Bomb Group. The B-24 to the
left has the olive drab color scheme prevalent early in the war, while
the
B-24 to the right has the natural aluminum finish predominant
later in the
war and which became the standard after April 1944, although many olive
drab bombers continued to be produced for night, Lone Wolf, and troop
transport use. Note that
the
aircraft on the left also has a lighter color, scalloped underbelly
paint scheme which
is indicative of manufacture at Ford's Willow Run Facility.

Forward

I
want to tell you about
my dad’s
experiences in World War II, because I think it’s important
that they get
passed along and recorded, and secondly because I am proud of his
participation in that important part of our country's, and world's,
history. He knew I felt that way because I told him so.
All
these years later, especially now that he's gone, that's one thing I'm
so glad I did. I told him he was a hero. I remember
that,
incredulously, he asked me why I thought he was a hero. I
told
him
because he had given everything that he had to give at the time to his
country. It was, and is, the truth. Plain and simple, laid
bare
right then and there.

In
his book The Wild Blue Stephen E. Ambrose included this poignant quote
that has stayed with me as I researched and wrote this. It is
attributed to P-51 fighter pilot Lt. Jefferson who provided his
thoughts on bomber crews.

"Planes
fell in flames, planes fell not in flames, an occasional one pulled out
and crash-landed, sometimes successfully, sometimes they blew up. Men
fell in flames, men fell in parachutes, some candlesticked (when their
parachutes didn't open). Pieces of men dropped through the hole, pieces
of planes ... Have you any idea of what it's like to vomit in an oxygen
mask? ... These bomber guys had seen the inside of hell."

Bob
Thompson tells another poignant story in his book Flying In Coffin
Corner. A 97th Bomb Group airman had bailed out of his burning B-17
Flying Fortress after the aircraft had been attacked and was badly
damaged by German Bf-109s from their nearby bases or Jagdgeschwaders.
The Bf-109 was known more commonly by the Allies as ME-109. All the
crew had bailed out and the aircraft
was ablaze. One airman had jumped out the bomb bay and opened his chute
too early. The chute hung up on the bomb racks or bay doors and he was
left dangling in mid-air, flapping around in the slipstream. The
burning plane flew on and the airman was doomed to a slow and agonizing
death. Out of the fray came a German Messerschmitt, a dreaded Bf-109,
known more commonly to the Allies as ME-109. The German fighter pilot
dove directly into the formation weaving his way through the American
heavy bombers. American gunners looked on stunned while the German
maneuvered his plane into position near the doomed aircraft with its
trapped and suffering airman. A short burst boomed from the German
fighter's machine guns and the airman was mercifully put out of his
suffering and certain horrid death. The German fighter peeled away.
Time froze. All shooting had stopped, and the war was suspended briefly
while the German flew out of the formation. The fighting then commenced
in all its ferocity.

The
picture
of
dad (above, left)
was taken several years after he returned from the war. He
donned
his old uniform for a professional photograph. The original
crew (above, right) was comprised of: standing (officers),
left to right
-
Sam Hamilton (Pilot), Joe Rudolph (Copilot), Emmett Warren "Bo" Barger,
Jr.
(Navigator), and John
Murphy (Bombardier); and
kneeling (enlisted men),
left
to right - Robert "Bob" Seidel (Nose Gunner), John Bills (Tail Gunner),
Harold "Hal" Adams (Flight Engineer & Top Turret Gunner), Otto
"Tex"
Mattiza (Left Waist Gunner),
Delbert "Dana" Satterfield (Ball Turret Gunner), and Richard "Dick"
Weber (Right Waist Gunner).

My father, Richard
Lee
Weber, Sr.,
serial number 35216570, flew bombing missions as a waist gunner from
a remote airstrip in Spinazzola, Italy
all those
years ago. As
a waist gunner, he was one
of
two fellows who stood at an open bay window
on each side of their four-engine plane and shot at enemy fighter
planes with
a belt-fed .50 caliber machine
gun.He
fired from the right
side
of the
aircraft and his view would have been like that in the picture below.
As a waist gunner, at times he would also have been responsible for
dispensing
thin strips of shredded metal codenamed "window" and more often called
"chaff" to confuse enemy radar. As
the
ship's
armorer, dad was trained in the
maintenance of all gun positions and bomb racks, and along with the
bombardier was responsible for arming the bombs. At
altitude the temperature could easily be 20 or 30 degrees below zero
with near gale force winds coming in through the waist gunner's open
window, causing frost to form on his machine gun, ammo boxes, and
interior surfaces. There
was no armored plating protecting the waist gunner's position; in fact
the "Pureclad" aluminum skin separating him from the outside world was
so thin you
could push a screwdriver through it. Pureclad was an aluminum sheeting
material that had a pure aluminum core and an exterior corrosion
resistant aluminum alloy coating. At times, when the German fighter
planes were attacking the
bombers, the spent .50 caliber shell casings accumulated on the floor of
the aircraft so deep the spent cartridges had to be
shoveled out
after the mission. Martin Middlebrook describes times like that in his
very informative book The
Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission.
Middlebrook indicates that after
periods of extended shooting a waist gunner's face would be brass
colored due to a fine brass powder that was ground off the shell
casings as they entered and were ejected from the machine gun's receiver.I suppose, all said and done, dad
was like the thousands of other young men who came from every American
city, town, and farmyard in answer to their country's call and spurred
on by outrage over Pearl Harbor and reports of the growing atrocities
by the mad man in Germany, but to me
he was different - he was my dad. He was part of a much larger effort,
one that united the country and mobilized its citizens and
industry. Citizens turned soldiers in droves. The largely
untapped pool of labor, the American women, gave their all to take
seats at workbenches or to stand on the assembly line, some served more
directly in the war effort and donned military uniforms in the various
armed forces branches. Industry retooled entire factories or
built new ones to meet the demands of the US and its allies for
equipment and munitions to beat back the Axis forces sweeping across
Europe and the Pacific. President Roosevelt established the War
Production Board which evolved over the course of the war to regulate
industrial production for the war effort. The nation was
committed to the war effort and what was referred to at the time as
"The Arsenal of Democracy". The was no other time like it in US
history. Industries stepped up to meet the demands of war.
Production of automobiles ceased on February 22, 1942, but the auto
industry stayed as busy as ever. Ford equipped itself to become a
massive manufacturer of bombers, other auto manufacturers made jeeps,
tanks, and even torpedoes. Small companies that previously made
trinkets were called upon to make components for more sophisticated
equipment like bomb sights. Companies that used to produce
stockings now churned out parachutes. Even Frigidaire began
making .50 caliber machine guns instead of refrigerators. All
these products and supplies made the trek across oceans to the war
fronts, just as the soldiers did.

The
Spinazzola airbase where dad was ultimately stationed was located in
the province of Barletta-Andria-Trani in the Apulia (Puglia in Italian) region and was part of the larger Foggia
Airfield Complex, a series of nearly two dozen bases and
numerous
auxiliary fields within a 25 mile radius of Foggia, Italy. Dad
was an airman in the 15th Army Air
Force, 55th Bombardment Wing, 460th Bomb Group, 763rd Bomb Squad and
was part of the Samuel Marlin Hamilton crew. There
was no separate Air
Force branch at that time. Headquarters
for the 15th Army Air Force was located in Bari, Italy. Foggia
and Bari are both towns in the Puglia region and not too distant
from Spinazzola. The
55th Air Wing was headquartered in Spinazzola and was comprised of the
460th Bomb Group located near Spinazzola, the 464th and 465th Bomb
Groups both located near Panatella, and the 485th Bomb Group located
near Venosa. These bomb groups flew B-24
Liberators, classified as heavy bombers, to targets in Nazi- and
Axis-occupied
Europe.

As
for the bombing missions themselves, the American bombing campaigns
differed significantly from those of its British allies - the Americans
bombed in broad daylight, a practice known as daylight precision
bombing, while the British bombed in the cover of
darkness. The targets of the American air force were tactical and
consisted of military,
industrial, economic centers, and infrastructure, while the
British targets were strategic and selected to impact the morale of the
German people
with the intent to demoralize the populace and pressure Axis leaders to
bring the war to an end. However, the British did not begin the war
bombing civilian population centers, in fact early in the war great
care was taken to avoid bombing civilians. At one point bombing was
even limited to harbors and ships at sea to ensure civilians were not
bombed. Later in the war, the rationale became more of seeing little
distinction between the factories, war machines, and supplies and
the workers who manned the factories and produced the war materials.
Consequently, America did bomb civilian population centers as not only
designated targets but as targets of opportunity when primary and
secondary targets were not viable. Civilians were also bombed
inadvertently due to their proximity to tactical targets. Of
course, the Germans bombed civilian centers and the debate will never
be settled as to what side bombed civilians first. Since the
British bombed at night,
bombing accuracy was not as important when compared to the American
bomber missions since the British targets were not tactical objectives
like single point, discreet targets such as railroad marshalling yards,
troop
concentrations, oil production facilities, and aircraft and ball
bearing factories. As a result,
one source indicates the British bombsight looked like it cost about
three dollars to manufacture and was entirely unlike the sophisticated
and complex American Norden bombsight. The British targeted cities and
towns and inflicted heavy casualties on the civilian population and
workforce. Early on in the war the American philosophy of daylight
precision bombing was under heavy scrutiny by top levels
within
the United States and British military organizations and at risk of
being reversed due to high crew and aircraft losses. American
General Ira Clarence Eaker was a vocal proponent of precision bombing
in contrast to British Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris. Harris was known
as "Bomber Harris" to his countrymen and as "Butcher Harris" to the
Germans for his bombing of civilians. During one meeting Harris
conceded to Eaker that the British saturation bombing did kill
civilians but that while German targets hit by Americans would be
rebuilt in a matter of weeks, it would take the Germans 21 years to
replace one of his civilian targets. Eaker was attributed with his own
great quote about his mission and strategy - "Gentlemen, you've been
telling me my plan is impossible.
The difficult we'll do immediately. The impossible will take a little
longer".

One
concept that bomber advocates Harris and Eaker certainly shared was
what was referred to as "The Bomber Dream". Keep in mind that
aircraft had not made their mark as a strategic or tactical power in
any war prior to WWII. Aircraft were used in WWI, but the technology
was in its infancy and not fully developed on a scale necessary to
impact the course of a global war. The Bomber Dream envisioned an
aerial force of such magnitude, range, and destructive capability that
its deployment and application could not only end wars, but obsolete
them. Harris and Eaker shared this vision, but disagreed
vehemently on the application of the bomber fleets. Others of the
day merely saw the bomber fleets as support to ground and sea forces,
while some others even thought of the air resources as just flying
artillery. The course of WWII would change many of the positions
of the naysayers, but as we know technology would continue to advance
to the point of obsolescing the massive bomber fleets themselves and
relegating their span of influence to a handful of years and the
diminishing memory of history. While the Bomber Dream in its original
sense may not have been achieved, the bombers of WWII did shorten the
war and change history and I believe President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt summed it up best when he stated "Hitler built a fortress
around Europe, but he forgot to put a roof on it".

Training

Dad
was
an
enlisted soldier from Columbus, Ohio and entered into active service on
April 12, 1943 at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. He attended basic training in
Biloxi, Mississippi where the focus was on physical training, military
regimen, drills, marching, bivouacking, and some weapons training.

He
attended Aircraft Armament
Schools at Lowry and Buckley Fields, both in Colorado. In
armament training dad learned the workings and assembly/disassembly of
all gun types, how to strip a .50 cal. blindfolded in one minute, how
to accurately shoot pistols
and .30 and .50 cal. machine guns. Some airmen tell of how they were
required to assemble a .50 cal. blindfolded and wearing gloves. He
learned the details of the workings
of the various turret types he may encounter on the B-24 models still
in service. As an armorer, he learned
about the various types of bombs and fuzes, how bomb and fuze type
selection varied based on target characteristics, how to load bombs,
and how
to fuze them. He learned how to maintain and repair any
malfunctioning weapon.After
armament training, in early March 1944 he received orders to
report to Flexible Gunnery School at Tyndall Field,
Florida to be trained
on all aspects for his waist gun position.
He was a Private First Class at this time. Flexible Gunnery training
differed from turret gunnery training because the gun was not
fixed in relation to the gunner and the guns were attached by what came
to be known as a flexible mount. The gunner swung the gun through its
range of motion unlike the turret gunners whose runs rotated with them.
At flexible gunnery school dad learned the workings and
assembly/disassembly of his .50 caliber guns and how to operate various
sights such as the
basic steel ring and end of muzzle bead sight as well as the more
sophisticated electronic sight which superimposed a
lit
ring on the target.
The latter was quicker to use and lessened eye strain. He learned how
to sight moving targets by shooting clay
pigeons from a moving truck. The clay pigeons were launched
from
various heights of towers to present a wide variety of angles
to
simulate combat conditions. He learned how to lead and follow
through when both the target and the gunner were moving. Although the
.50 cal. machine gun could fire at a rate of around 1,800 rounds per
minute, much attention was paid to ensure the gunner fired in short
bursts to avoid overheating the gun and ruining the barrel. Eventually
target practice entailed shooting from a moving aircraft at aerial
targets and drogues pulled by another tow plane. Gunners were taught to
recognize
various aircraft, even if only a silhouette was presented.
Following completion of all his training he
was classified as an Airplane Armorer Gunner and as such he
was qualified to serve as a senior armorer, aerial
photographer, and
waist gunner, which was his primary role during combat with enemy
fighter planes.

After
Flexible Gunnery School, he received orders to report to Westover
Field, near Springfield, Massachusetts for crew assignment. Here they
learned who would be on their crew and met them for the first time.
The crew was comprised of fellows from all walks of life across the
United States. The officers were: Sam Hamilton, Pilot, from Alabama;
Joe Rudolph,
Copilot, originally from Rhode Island, but grew up in
Massachusetts; Emmett Warren "Bo" Barger, Jr., Navigator, from
Virginia; and John Murphy,
Bombardier, from Massachusetts. The enlisted men were: Robert
"Bob" Seidel, Nose
Gunner, from Indiana; John Bills, Jr., Tail Gunner, from Tennessee;
Harold "Hal" Adams, Flight
Engineer & Top Turret Gunner, from California; Otto "Tex"
Mattiza,
Left Waist
Gunner, from Texas; Delbert "Dana" Satterfield, Ball Turret Gunner,
born in West Virginia, but grew up in Indiana; and Richard
"Dick" Weber, Right Waist Gunner, from Ohio.

They
were
officially assigned crew
positions and began to get to know
one another. They were also given another physical since they were
nearing the time to go overseas and into combat. The crew was
given orders to report to Chatham Field, near Savannah, Georgia for
Combat Ready/Overseas training. They arrived at Chatham around June 15,
1944. Here the crew began to function as a single, cohesive unit and
started to
learn to work effectively and to rely on each other's
knowledge, training, and competence, the traits that might
help
them survive in a combat situation.
While at Chatham they flew many hours, ran through their various check
lists, and logged air time. They flew up and down the eastern coast,
usually at altitudes less than 10,000 feet so that oxygen was not
required. Once they flew to San Antonio, Cuba and spent a night. They
flew low over the surf at the Bahamas. John Murphy was even able to
arrange some bombsight simulator training for the crew in an airplane
hangar. They were able to view a huge moving map through the bombsight
and get a basic understanding of all the factors that went
into
calculating
the bomb drop. They also flew at night, much to the consternation of
some
crew members. However, Sam Hamilton's and Joe Rudolph's abilities
impressed the crew and built the needed confidence in their pilot and
copilot. The also practiced formation flying that would be the
normal
procedure during a real combat mission entailing close flight with
numerous other aircraft. Flying a B-24 was tough work, that was one
downside of the design. Flying required constant physical exertion by
the pilot while attention was paid to the myriad of gauges on the
console. Like most pilots and copilots, Sam and Joe worked out an
arrangement to share the flying, trading duties to give the other a
break every so often. Many pilots and copilots switched
responsibilities every half hour or so.

Overseas To War

They received orders in
mid-August to report to Mitchell Field, NY to begin the journey
overseas to join the war in Europe. They arrived at Mitchell Field on
August 26, 1944. At
Mitchell Field the crew was assigned a brand new B-24 bomber, serial
number 42-50010. It was built in Fort Worth, Texas by North American,
and the crew was very proud of the new aircraft. Pilot Sam Hamilton
wrote home and told his family that the crew had decided to name their
aircraft "The Opp Daily - Strictly Front Page" in honor of his Opp, AL
hometown and local newspaper. This would have been an unofficial
working name and probably never appeared as nose art on any aircraft
the crew flew as the crew was not assigned a specific bomber once they
were overseas. The crew had some
leave time and got to visit New York and see the sights.

The
enlisted men were all made corporals by mid-September and received
orders to report to Grenier Field, New Hampshire. They were moving fast
towards combat now and were only at Grenier Field briefly. The next
stop was Gander Field, Gander, Newfoundland, the last
destination on the
North American continent before going overseas. They were at Gander
Field for two or three days. While there, they learned they would be
assigned to the 15th Army Air Force, although they did not know
location or bomb group and squadron yet. They departed Gander in their
new aircraft
to fly to Lajes Field, Azores, off the coast of Spain, but some
equipment malfunction caused them to return. Gander was experiencing
bad weather so the landed at Goose Bay, Labrador. Their bomber was
repaired and the next afternoon, they headed out for the Azores again.
They were also loaded with cots to deliver overseas, so the crew got
some sack time en route. Dad had somehow procured a mattress and slept
in style compared to his crewmates. They arrived at Azores and stayed
only briefly and departed to Marrakesh, Morocco. The war became much
more real to the crew as they saw the wrecked German and Italian
aircraft off the sides of the runway in Morocco. The detritus served as
testament that this had been an active battle zone. I doubt the crew
realized then that while the American crews counted their mission
credits to achieve the required 35 or 50 mission to complete their
tour, the German fighter pilots whose aircraft now littered the
airfield had no such limits. They flew until they died in relentless
pursuit of the Allied aircraft. The crew had about a
day
and a half of down time in Morocco and some of the crew made
friends with the local ladies, exchanging American dollars, ballpoint
pens, clothing, and just about anything else for the pleasure of their
company.

Leaving Morocco, they were provided sealed orders to be opened an
hour after takeoff. They opened the orders as directed and
learned they were going to Tunis, Tunisia. Tunis was the former
home of the 15th Army Air Force before it moved to Italy and
headquartered at Bari, Foggia Province, Italy on December 1,
1943. The 15th Army Air Force was formed by splitting the 12th
Army Air Force and was initial commanded by General James Harold
"Jimmy" Doolitle, famous for his post-Pearl Harbor raid on Tokyo.
In November 1943 General Nathan Farragut Twining took over Command and
Doolittle then commanded the 12th Army Air Force. General Twining
would remain the commander of the 15 Army Air Force for the duration of
the war in Europe and after the victory in Europe go on to briefly
command B-29 bombing operations in the 20th Army Air Force in the
Pacific Theater.

Dad
and the rest of the crew of the Opp Daily - Strictly Confidential
landed at a Tunisian airfield that had not long before been a Luftwaffe
airbase and stayed the night in an adobe barracks. The next
stop was Italy. By this time, the southern half of Italy was under
Allied control. Mainland Italy was invaded by the Allies in
Operation Avalanche via an amphibious landing beginning September 3,
1943 shortly after the invasion of Sicily and in a matter of days the
situation changed quickly in southern Italy. The invasion was
essentially a three-pronged attack in southern Italy with the third
prong forces landing at Taranta, south of Bari. The British 1st
Airborne Division easily occupied the important ports at Bari (on
September 11, 1943) and Brindisi and British 8th Army troops scoured
the area throughout September and into October 1943 and took control of
the many airbases used by the Italians and Germans, including those
around Foggia which was liberated on September 27, 1943.

Foggia
had been a hub for the Germans due to the presence of the various
airfields and the nearby Port of Bari. Foggia had been bombed
nine times by the allies, lastly on September 15, 1943. The
armistice with Italy had been signed earlier, on September 8, 1943, but
the bombing after that date was to destroy and contain German troop
concentrations. A brief but interesting article appeared in
various newspapers, even in the distant newspaper called The Age in
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on October 1, 1943. It talked
about five unlucky Germans paratroopers who were engineers sent on a
demolition mission to Foggia. They appropriated two cars and
drove into Foggia intent on blowing up key buildings as the
last step in the German withdrawal from the town. Unfortunately
for them, they did not realize that the British had already occupied
the town and were easily dispatch by riflemen before they could
demolish their targets. The Australian newspaper referred to it
as a "Wild West Shootout".

Those captured bases would
all become part of the 15th Army Air Force operation. The US Army
Corp of Engineers repaired and converted the airfields to ones suitable
for heavy bombers. Soon, instead of German Messerschmitts and
Focke-Wulfs, there would be Allied bombers and fighters made from good
old American steel and aluminum, many constructed on Ford assembly lines,
rising to the skies from those same airfields. Although the
Italian forces in southern Italy signed the armistice on September 8,
1943 surrendering to the Allied forces, the fascist forces in the north
loyal to Mussolini continued to support Germany and the Axis
forces. This resulted in a sort of civil war in Italy when the
southern Italian regular troops, former Allied enemies now called
"co-belligerents" instead being considered full-fledged allies, joined
causes with the Italian resistance fighters intent on destroying
Germans and Italian fascists in aid of the Allied cause. An
article of the time indicates that the co-belligerent status "does not
confer on her [Italy] any special rights or status. On the
contrary, it is taken to mean that Italy is being given a chance to
'work her passage' and the final enforcement of the armistice terms
will depend on how the Italians co-operate with the Anglo-American
forces". It goes on to indicate that the Allies' intent is to
"attempt to solidify the loyalty of the Italians to King Emmanuel".

Londoners
read about Italy's co-belligerent status in the newspapers in late
September and early October about the same time they read, on September
30, 1943 that the fall of Naples was just hours away. The Axis
forces had been steadily pushed northward since the invasion and Rome
was liberated on June 4, 1944. By the time dad arrived in Italy
the active front had been pushed as far north as Florence and
Pisa. Florence was liberated on August 4, 1944 and Pisa on
September 2, 1944. When dad arrived the war was still being
fought in northern Italy and missions were actively flown
there. The fall of Naples and Foggia was the official end
of Operation Avalanche. Once established, the 15th Army Air Force
aided in the ultimate conquest of Italy via its missions to northern
Italy, but its primary efforts were focused on targets in Germany,
Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania. The 15th Army Air
Force also flew missions in support of the invasion of southern France.

The
crew of the Opp Daily landed at Gioia del Colle Airbase, about 35 miles
north of Taranto. The airbase at Gioia had been captured earlier
in the war by the British and now served in part as a supply depot and
replacement center in support of the 15th Army Air Force. It was
here that they learned they were assigned to the 460th Bomb
Group. Sadly and to their dismay, they were relieved of the brand
new plane they were so proud of and for which they had great hopes and
plans. They learned they had merely shuttled the aircraft to the
European Theater from the States. They had also learned the hard
way the difference between replacement aircrews and more veteran crews
- new aircraft went to veteran crews, not replacements. More
lessons on this key difference would follow.

On September
29th, the crew departed Gioia del Colle Airbase and flew in another
aircraft the 40 or 50 miles to the 460th Bomb Group base in Spinazzola,
near what is referred to as the spur on the boot of Italy. Their
new home in Spinazzola was the headquarters of the 460th Bomb Group,
one of the bomb groups of the 55th Bomb Wing or the 15th Army Air
Force. Their base was one of the many air bases that comprised
the Foggia air base complex. The wide flat agricultural plains in
the Puglia and surrounding area were ideal for air bases and many of
the nearby captured German and Italian bases had runways long enough
for the heavy bombers.

The crew's path from the United
States to Spinazzola was similar to, but somewhat different than, the
route the original crews flew when the Bomb Group had been first
established and deployed to the European Theater in the first couple of
months of 1944. Their route took them from Chatham Field, GA to
Mitchell Field, NY to Morrison Field, FL to Waller Field, Trinidad,
then across the equator to Brazil, then across the Atlantic Ocean and
the equator once again on an 11 hour or so flight to Dakar, Senegal. From there it was
onward to Marrakesh, Morocco, then over North Africa to Oudna 1 Air
Base about ten miles southeast of Tunis, Tunisia, and then on to Italy.

Private Richard
Lee WeberA
B-24 Waist
Gunner's View

Spinazzola
is a town in the Barletta-Andria-Trani province of the Puglia
region. In English Puglia is known as Apulia and is the
area that essentially encompasses the heal of the boot of Italy.
The other provinces that comprise Puglia are Brindisi, Lecce, Taranto,
and Foggia where the 15th Army Air Force headquarters was
located. Some of these provinces also had towns or cities of the
same name which added to the confusion for the new arrivals.

Upon
enlistment, dad and the crew signed papers that obligated them to the
war effort for its duration and for six months following or until
otherwise officially discharged. Now, after arriving at their new
460th Bomb Group base in southern Italy in October 1944, their
intention was to meet that obligation by flying bombing missions for
which they were well-trained in support of the Allied European
campaigns against Hitler and the Axis forces. . Somewhere along
the way the enlisted crew members were promoted to Sergeants. Dad
was ultimately promoted to a slightly higher rank and became the only
Staff Sergeant on the crew. I suspect this was because of his
added duties as Sr. Armorer and photographer. The fact that dad
had worked for Curtiss-Wright Corp. as a final assembler in the
Columbus, Ohio aircraft factory before the war may have given him an
edge as well. I am sure dad's extra "rocker" stripe below his
three upwardly pointing chevrons was in jeopardy at times due to his
wild city-boy and volatile nature. I've seen stories about dad
getting drunk with other crew members to the point of waving his
Army-issued .45 caliber pistol around and having to be calmed down by
his officers. Dad had been a Golden Gloves boxer before the war
and was not afraid of confrontation or of throwing or taking a
punch. On one occasion he and Hal Adams had to build an outdoor
volleyball court as punishment for some of their disruptive
antics. Somehow dad kept his stripes and served as the senior
non-commissioned crew member. Crew member John Bill's mentions in his
memoirs that even though dad had his faults (i.e., being somewhat
narcissistic and often speaking of his sexual prowess) that "he was no
coward". Of course, for an unmarried city-boy in a foreign land
to be somewhat boastful of his abilities with the ladies might hardly
be considered a fault at the age of 20. I believe the "no coward"
remark foreshadows dad's conduct in combat under extremely tense
situations and is the reason a high honor was later convey upon him.
More on that later.

Descriptions of dad's
aerial combat missions follow and the information used and often cited comes from many, sometimes
conflicting, sources. I've done my best to present the most
accurate depiction possible to document his missions and events until
the end of the war in Europe. I've also included a significant amount of information
about the events that followed dad's tenth mission, a milestone in my
father's life, one that would become part of him the remainder of his
years.

October 1944

For the crew, newly arrived in Italy in late September, October
at the 460th Bomb Group airbase near Spinazzola in southern Italy was
a cold fall month full of rain and mud. It was nothing like
the
Mediterranean paradise or sunny Italy image they had in their minds back in the States. Sadly, it
was a
foreboding of worse weather to come. Their base was not like many of
the other bases, and especially not like the comfy quarters and nearby
town amenities many of the "Mighty 8th" Army Air Force airmen experienced in England. Instead of
inhabiting a base that had already been established, albeit perhaps
previously occupied by former Axis forces, their base was still under
unfunded construction having only recently begun to be carved out of
muddy agricultural fields and pastures. There were no built quarters to
house them, no facilities, and no heat, instead they sheltered in
mud-floored tents to keep them from the wind, rain, and snow.

The
enlisted crew had been provided living quarters that consisted of a canvas tent that
measured about 20 feet by 20 feet. It had no heater, no lights, and no
floor, unless mud was considered a flooring material. After
one rain, they awoke to find their shoes, boots, and other items washed
toward one end of the tent due to the storm water that had come through,
creating a swale in the middle of their tent. They
quickly dug a small culvert around the upstream side and along
the sides of their tent to
divert future flows. Still, there
was much down time as
a result of the weather and the newly arrived crews busied themselves
working on heaters
for their tents. Most designs were modeled after those built by the
more
veteran crews. The damp chill increased and heightened the
awareness of an impending winter and punctuated the need to construct
and perfect
the operation of their own makeshift fuel oil or aviation fuel
heater and
to find other ways
to keep the cold and weather
out. They built a heater out of a steel drumbarrel and some incendiary
bomb
canisters they found and used for stove pipe. Another metal drum was
kept
outside on a stand at sufficient elevation to provide good gravity flow
and was
used to store aviation fuel for the
heater. One of the crew acquired some copper tubing usually used for
hydraulic lines on the aircraft and a shutoff valve and they were then
able
to feed and regulate the fuel, which was a great improvement and
significantly contributed to the safety of the apparatus. The heater
worked well and kept the damp
and cold out of the tent. Somewhere along the way, they figured out how
to get 220V power and found an appropriate bulb for light, although one
of the crew nearly electrocuted himself while working with that high
voltage.

Even as sparse as accommodations were by the time dad and the crew
arrived, conditions had been much worse for the original members of the
460th Bomb Group who arrived in December 1943 through February
1944. Steve Kuhn gives a little insight in a September 24, 2006
article in The North Platte Telegraph. Steve talks about finding
his unerected tent dumped in the mud off the side of a rutted mud
roadway in a pasture that looked more like a pond than the start of an
airbase. He describes that he and the rest of the airmen first to
arrive had three blankets apiece, but no cots and no beds. They
gathered weeds and grass to spread over the mud so they could lay their
blankets down. Kuhn mentions that the ship that had the bases'
and headquarters' supplies had been sunk.

What
Kuhn most likely referred to was a raid on the Port of Bari by 105
bomb-laden German JU-88s on December 2, 1943 while scores of ships were
waiting in the harbor at Bari to unload. Numerous supply ships
had arrived at the Port of Bari and carried the supplies, equipment,
and aviation fuel necessary for establishing the 15th Army Air Force
headquarters in Bari and many of the surrounding bases. The port
was under British jurisdiction at the time due to its critical role as
a through-point of supplies for Montgomery's 8th Army. There was
no Allied air cover because the military leaders did not think the
Germans had sufficient air forces within range to amass a meaningful
aerial attack, even though German reconnaissance flights were often
observed. The flights were not taken seriously and after a while
not even fired upon. They were considered nuisance flights and
distractions caused by the Germans. Little did the Allies know
that what the German pilots observed was being reported and the reports
of a packed and bustling harbor were being noticed by German leadership
and military planners.

The German fighter-bombers came in from
their bases in northern Italy and Yugoslavia just as darkness was
falling around 7:25 PM. They scattered chaff, which the
Germans called "Duppel" to confuse Allied radar and although they had
aerial flares for target illumination to aid in the bombing, they did not need them because the
entire port was brightly lit as the dock workers were working all night
to unload the backlog of ships lined up gunwale to gunwale in the
harbor. The devastating attack was the German's way of welcoming
the 15th Army Air Force to Italy and letting the Allies know they were
watched. It was clearly also payback for having been chased out
of southern Italy just months before. Many of the JU-88s were
undoubtedly the same aircraft that had flown just weeks before from the
bases now being occupied by the Allies. Many ships were
bombed and others caught fire from the proximity of other burning
ships, burning debris, oil, and fuel. The raid was so devastating that
it was called the "Italian Pearl Harbor" or "Little Pearl Harbor", but
this raid got very little press for one very dark reason. One
ship that was not directly hit but caught fire in the harbor inferno
was the SS John Harvey, hull number 878, one of many liberty ships in
the port. It had been built by the North Carolina Ship Building
Company and launched less than a year earlier on January 9, 1943.
Liberty ships were rapidly constructed and mass produced versatile
cargo and troop transport ships used extensively in the war.
2,751 liberty ships were produced to plow the seas in support of the
war effort. The SS John Harvey had been waiting in the port for
five days while other ships were being unloaded around the clock.
While the SS John Harvey may have looked like all its brothers and
sisters in the port that day, it was very different. It carried a
secret cargo the United States preferred not to become public
knowledge; consequently, little information of the raid was released
and what was released was downplayed. While the SS John Harvey
was harbored and awaiting its turn to be unloaded, few knew of its
top-secret cargo. The secret cargo in its dark hold was a weapon
- enough liquid sulfur mustard gas to manufacture about 2,000 M47A1 100
pound gas bombs. Some reports indicate that the SS John Harvey
carried actual gas bombs, other reports indicate it carried the
chemical and bomb shells separately because the shells would not be
filled with the chemical until shortly before the bomb was needed for
loading due to fear of leakage. The chemical was mustard gas, a
blistering agent outlawed by virtually all civilized nations.
Nations which employed it use would be considered pariahs in violation
of the Geneva Convention.

Roosevelt had made clear his
position on chemical weapons many times during the course of the war,
even as early as December 1941 at the start of the war. On June
8, 1943 he stated quite clearly "Use of such weapons has been outlawed
by the general opinion of civilized mankind. This country has not
used them, and I hope that we never will be compelled to use
them. I state categorically that we shall under no circumstances
resort to the use of such weapons unless they are first used by our
enemies." Having the weapons available and deployed at fledgling
air bases did not violate this position, but it certainly shows the
readiness to employ such "outlawed" chemical force if provoked.
It is both ironic and terrible that the weapons, while never used on
the enemy, destroyed many Allied personnel and innocent civilians that
day and over time due to the lingering effects of the concentrated
chemical. Perhaps worse was the attempt, successful for many
years, to cover up the entire event.

Once the SS John
Harvey was ablaze the deadly garlic-scented chemical, a human
pesticide, was released and began to spread in the water and air.
Some volatized or evaporated and mixed with the smoke from the attack
and spread with the breeze over the entire coastal and nearby inland
area, wafting over villages and fertile fields that in the growing
season would go on to produce olives and other foodstuffs consumed and
distributed by the local farmers. The liquid form of the deadly
chemical mixed with the oil and fuel in the water and coated the
seamen and dock workers who had fallen or jumped into the water. There
were significant casualties as a result of the raid itself and,
further, as a result of the chemical weapon release. The release was
kept secret and attending doctors were unaware of the affliction of the
injured crews, workers, and civilians. Treatment that could have
been administered to save lives was not provided because the cause of
the affliction was not known. Simple measures such as removing
chemical-laden clothing and bathing the patient were not
performed. From a logistic perspective, the raid and aftermath
delayed fully establishing and provisioning the bases for several
months and the port was not reopened until February.

The SS John Harvey Burns and Emits Plumes of Smoke and Mustard Gas at Port of Bari

In total,
during the course of the 25 minute raid, 28 ships were sunk or
destroyed, three more were salvaged, and another 12 were damaged.
Some sources indicate up to 1,000 military and merchant marine
personnel and 1,000 civilians died as a result of the raid. Not
one of the 105 German aircraft were downed. The results of the
December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack almost pale in comparison to the
Bari utter devastation, especially when one considers that the Pearl
Harbor attack was on an unsuspecting nation at peace while the attack
at Bari was done by a known enemy intent on our destruction, one which
had been regularly performing fly overs, in an active combat area, and
on an armed and an otherwise battle-ready and war savvy foe. For
many years afterwards, entire families were lost due to cancer, chronic
and pernicious lung ailments, and other rare maladies perhaps
attributable to the concentrated chemical exposure. I believe
this is a case where the fast and furious victories over the past three
months jaded military decision-making and sense of preparedness and
created an environment of superiority and security.

Of course
dad and the crew would have known little of this background. The
raid itself may have been talked about by some of the more tenured
ground and air crews, those who arrived when the base was first
established, but the chemical release would not have been common
knowledge until pertinent military records were declassified in 1959,
long after the war's end and the damage done. With all the bad weather
that kept dad and the rest of the crew inside as much as possible and
the fact that the crew had still not been cleared as eligible for
combat missions, they had a lot of spare time on their hands, despite
the time they spent improving the tent and learning about life at a
working combat air base. The crew welcomed the opportunity to
squeeze in some gunnery practice when they could or to pick up some
other new or refresher training or just to get to know some of the
other airmen. If they were lucky, as a special diversion, they might
find a way to get to headquarters in Bari to visit the PX and see the
American Red Cross girls who served hot coffee, soft, warm donuts, and, better still, lipsticked
smiles served with a side of perfume.

Perhaps it was just the
bad weather and the doldrums due to lack of activity that came with it,
but the crew sensed there was no camaraderie, no esprit de
corps in the Bomb Group. They felt that the veteran crews made no
attempt to get to know them. There seemed to be no effort, even by the
Group leadership, to build a team or to even share Squadron, Group,
Wing, or 15th Army Air Force history, purpose, and accomplishments with
the new arrivals. The sense that new arrivals were simply second
class replacements pervaded the new arrivals and reinforced the
feelings experienced upon having their original aircraft taken away and
given to a veteran crew. This serious morale issue and the ever
present Italian rain and mud were some of the things that the
airmen remembered even after the war.
The new base life was different for
some of the officers too. Sam
Hamilton and Joe Rudolph spent a lot of time in formation training and
learning the way things really got done in combat. Sometimes the crew
would fly with them, but not always. Finally, they got the word
that they passed
their check-out flights making their crew available
for
combat
missions. The weather was still bad and many missions were cancelled,
but all knew that eventually the weather would break, as it always did,
and a combat mission would be possible. Sure enough, on the evening of
October 10th, the crew
learned they were schedule for their first mission the next morning.
The briefing was scheduled for 6:30 AM.

Mission No. 1

October 11, 1944, Wednesday.
Target: Sauerwork
Ordnance Depot, Vienna,
Austria. The
start of every mission began with a wakeup call, breakfast, and a
briefing in an old barn that had been converted for military use. Briefings provided information to
the crew on the purpose of the mission, course information, size and
composition of the task force, rendezvous point, initial point for the
start of the bomb run, alternate targets, anticipated opposition, and
weather conditions. The various topics were presented by different
personnel, such as the operations officer or the intelligence
officer. Intelligence
reported in this early morning briefing that the target was defended
by 400
anti-aircraft guns. This was going to be a tough first run to
one
of the most strategic Axis cities.
The
crew was flying in "A for Able" in the lagging position
referred
to as "tail-end Charlie" where the least experienced crews
flew to pay their dues. "A for Able" was the working name in military parlance of the
aircraft. 460th Bomb Group aircraft, like most other aircraft, had
radio-call designation or aircraft identitification letters painted on
the fuselage for identification purposes. A for Able would
have had a large yellow capital "A" painted on both sides of the
aircraft, Many, aircraft, espcially those aircraft assigned to a
dedicated crew, also had customized art and typically an aircraft name
painted toward the front, or nose, of the aircraft. Such aircraft would
often be referred to by their crew-given name. Later in history, this
artwork would become to be known as "nose art". Tail-end Charlie
position was the last aircraft in the formation or "box" or subset of
the formation and considered by many to be the most vulnerable position
since it did not have aircraft behind it for coverage. John Bills's
memoir
has this
mission as flown on October 10, 1944, but my research
indicates it
would have been on October 11th.

A typical mission flight chart showing
flight path from base to initial point to target and return.This chart is from the one of the 459th BG's
missions to Bad Vöslau. Text boxes with arrow leaders were added by this author for clarity.

Flak,
the
acronym
for the German word "Fliegerabwehrkanonen"
(meaning "aeroplane defense cannons"), is the burst of an
anti-aircraft shell and is marked by
a red and orange blast ending up in a thick, black puff of smoke in the
sky. Anti-aircraft guns were modern cannons which fired
shells that
typically had projectile noses which were timed fuses that
could
be set, given the known shell velocity, so that the shell would explode
at
a
desired altitude, hopefully near an aircraft. There were
various
calibers of flak cannons ranging from 12.7mm to 150mm. Perhaps
the most feared and common caliber for air defense was the 88mm cannon.
It shells were slightly over three feet long, and the
projectile
itself weighing just over 20 lbs. The cannons could fire to an
altitude up to around 49,000 ft. The 88mm shell was believed
to be
able to inflict damage sufficient to destroy an aircraft within 30
yards of detonation, and still inflict serious damage to 200 yards. The
rate of fire is often seen
quoted as three rounds per minute, but other sources indicate a rate of
15 to 20 rounds per minute. Some variability was likely a
result
of the experience of the flak cannon crew, which varied
between 8
and 10 men. The 88mm cannons could be fired from a
wheel-mount platform, a stationary cruciform platform, or a stationary
"V" mount platform. For air defense, the cruciform
mount was common and allowed the cannon to be rotated in any direction,
while the "V" mount did not allow full rotation. Early on,
sighting was done visually by optical instruments to determine range
and elevation,
but later radar control was introduced. Flak batteries were
located in long "Flak belts" which were installations of flak cannons
over a wide geographic area, typically between envisioned the Allied
aircraft approach and industrial targets.

Early in the war, spotters would gauge the elevation, speed, and course
of the
American bombers
or similar information was
received from German fighters engaging or trailing
the
formation. Searchlights and sound locators
would be used to spot
bombers during nighttime raids. Ordnance men would set
the timed
fuses
accordingly for the desired altitude; the Germans had not perfected an
effective proximity fuse as had the
Allies. Later in the war, radar control was widely used to control the
fire. Wurzburg A radar provided accurate data on the bomber formation.
The information was processed through apparatus collectively referred
to as the "Predictor" by the Germans (because the system was intended
to "predict" where the aircraft would be when the shell reached it) and
the "Director" or "Fire Control Director" by the Allies. The
information combined other data that could affect projectile motion as
well, such as muzzle velocity, ambient air temperature, wind direction,
etc., and thereby provided the
settings needed to prepare the gun and
shell for firing. Interesting to note is that even though radar and its
system of control was available, many still preferred the use of
optical instruments for fire control and believed the results were
better. Another technique for directing anti-aircraft fire or at
least for providing the anti-aircraft gunners a fixed aim point was the
Germans use of what was referred to as a swarm of bees, not so jokingly
referred to by aircrews as "S.O.B." Swarm of bees was the result
of the use of a special shell that would burst at a desired altitude
and resulted in a puff of metal strips that would gently float or
seemingly hang in the air for a while. Some believed that the
strips also provided a sort of radar marker. In any event, a
properly placed swarm of bees burst, such as in the flight path of a
bomber formation, provided a nearly fixed point of aim and greatly
improved anti-aircraft gunner accuracy.

When the shell
exploded, hot, supersonic chunks and pieces of jagged, twisted metal
shot off in all directions just like a fireworks shell, but with a
steel burst instead of a beautiful aerial display. Some airmen called
flak "iron clouds" or "black mushrooms". The sound was tremendous and could be heard as a
sort of muffled "krumph" or crushing, crunching rumble sound even in
the loud
bombers. Some described the flak as being "so thick you
could walk on it". The metal
from a flak burst is called shrapnel. It is designed to
destroy both planes and the people inside them. Sometimes the
shrapnel
would go in one side of the aircraft and out the other side, hitting
nothing in between. Sometimes the shrapnel
would pierce the thin skin of the aircraft and bounce around
inside a bit. Sometimes, the worst of times, it would go in
one side and tear something inside apart. Maybe that
something was mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, or
human. Shrapnel was
indifferent. The calculation is simple
and intuitive - the more flak in the sky, the more metal there was
whizzing around you.

460th
Bomb Group B24s in Flak B-24
Waist Gunners In Action

The black puffs, in the
picture on the
left, are where the anti-aircraft shells exploded sending shrapnel in
all
directions. German shells had fuses that were set by ground crews to
explode at a calculated altitude. Fortunately, the Germans did not have
the well-guarded American proximity fuse technology that allowed
shells to explode when they detected a nearby aircraft or other target.

A known area of intense anti-aircraft gun concentration through which
the bombers must pass going to and coming from a mission was humorously
(and ominously) called "Flak Alley" by the airmen. The German
anti-aircraft guns were
accurate to around 25,000 feet which is higher than the altitude from
which the bombers could bomb with any reasonable amount of accuracy;
consequently, there was no escape for the bombers and it was not
unusual for fifty percent of the bomber formation to experience some
amount of damage when flak was encountered on a mission.

After the briefings, the crews were trucked to their aircraft and
boarded with their gear. They busied themselves while waiting for
the green flare that signaled the mission was a go. Some sources
indicate flares were used instead of radio communication to prevent
enemy monitoring the frequency from knowing the start of a
mission. Then came the taxi down the runway while gaining speed
for takeoff. Depending on load the bomber would need to reach 100
to 130 miles per hour for a successful takeoff. Once airborne the
bombers would maneuver into the defensive formation they would maintain
to the target. Formation was dangerous and sometimes resulted in
collisions. Formation might take an hour or more and once
completed aircraft followed their predetermined heading toward the
target. Once the
bombers had reached the Initial Point (IP), the point where the bomb
run to the target actually began, and the point where the bombardier
would take control, the course as described during
briefing was fixed and no evasive maneuvers could be performed. Until
the IP was reached, the bombers could usually make wide "S"
turns to evade or
bypass tough areas. The IP was typically 18 to 20 miles from the target
and the run to the target was around
five minutes.
The bombardier had two alternative methods for controlling
the
aircraft on the bomb run. He could either employ a system
that
allowed the pilot to be informed of necessary course changes through
the Pilot Director Indicator (PDI), a large round indicator gauge
located directly in front of the pilot above the Rate-of-Climb and
Airspeed Indicators on the main console, or by making those minor
course changes through the use of the Norden bombsight itself.
Once over the target, the bombardier looked for the aim point
described in the mission briefing that morning. For an industrial site,
the aim point was typically some building or other identifiable point
which was essentially the centroid of the complex or facility. The aim
point was selected to maximize the concentration of the bombs on the
target.

On this first
mission, the sky was filled with flak
so thick the pilot couldn't always see. There were supposed
to be only 400 anti-aircraft guns, but
there turned out to be 1,200 of them, all waiting for the American
bombers to fly over. By this time in the war, Vienna was the second
most heavily defended city in terms of numbers of anti-aircraft guns,
the most heavily defended city being Berlin itself. Thomas
Childers, in his book entitled Wings
of Morning: The
Story of the Last
American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II,
indicates that by fall of 1944 the Germans had approximately
one
million personnel assigned to anti-aircraft defenses and that there
were over 50,000 German anti-aircraft guns pointed skyward. He
describes the rupturing shells and resultant flak as "sooty turbulence"
and as bone-jarring concussions that could start in an instant
from the sides, front, above or below, causing the plane to "bump",
"shudder", and "stagger" just from the shock waves. One pilot mentioned
that during flak barrages he, like many before him, soon found it
possible to sweat even when the temperature in the aircraft was 30
degrees below zero.If you touched metal with your bare hands you risked leaving skin behind.

Missions
like this were tough and thoughts of what happened to 460th bomb group
crews just the day before were fresh on the rookie crew's minds.
The day before this first mission, one aircraft, the Sky Wolves,
piloted by Gideon H. Jones from the 460th Bomb Group/760th Bomb Squad
went down that day due to anti-aircraft fire. Their mission had been to
the Piave/Susegan railroad bridge. The entire crew bailed out of
their smoking and oil-covered bomber and were eventually captured
although some evaded capture for several days and some were originally
reported incorrectly as killed in action. Another aircraft from
the 460th Bomb Group/762nd piloted by Harlan R. Logan had crew bail out
over the Adriatic Sea when their ship iced up in a storm and went out
of control. Subsequently, the pilot was able to regain control
and land the craft safely, but the two crew members who jumped,
navigator 2nd Lt. Wesley Olson and nose gunner/asst. engineer Cpl.
Harold Ebe, were killed. Missing Air Crew Reports 9044 and 9202,
respectively, document the losses of the Logan and Jones 460th BG
B-24 crews that day.As
for dad and the
rest of the crew on their jaunt to Vienna, they
were able
to drop their
bombs on target, wheel around, and head for home. Later
on the ground
they counted at least 30 holes
from flak in their bomber, including a large hole in John
Bills's
turret. Fortunately, John had crawled out just before the
turret
was
hit
when
he realized he was not wearing his flak jacket or metal helmet. The
shrapnel didn't find anyone on their crew
that day. It
just
went in one side and out the other or bounced around until
it wore
itself out and lay smoldering on the floor. Some
crew members kissed the ground when they landed. They had
survived their first mission.

Original crew
members, from left to right: Hal Adams, Bo Barger, Joe
Rudolph, John Murphy, Sam Hamilton, Tex Mattiza, and Dick Weber.
Some of the
crew appear to be hamming it up with cigars in hand or
mouth. The photo,
above right, is of my dad enjoying some
down time playing horseshoes. (Photos taken at
Chatham Field, GA).

Mission No. 2

October 13, 1944,
Friday. Target:
Three
warehouses or factories near Banhida,
Hungary,
near the
Yugoslavian border.
After an unexpected day off due to a cancelled October 12th mission, the new
day started
with the pre-dawn sound of a jeep coming nearer and then the sound of
its squeaky brakes as it ground to a halt outside the
tent. After
some soggy footsteps, in stepped the duty officer, Bob Cutler, with his
flashlight
for the early morning wakeup call. He woke each of the crew members,
waiting to be sure they were really up. Bob had learned to keep a safe
distance when waking up the airmen, regardless of whether they were
officers or enlisted men. Some woke up swinging and
many
would have liked to connect with the guy who held the flashlight before
dawn had even come.

The
crew was getting a feel for the normal routine of the start of
a
mission day. They quickly dressed and headed out to the mess
tent
for breakfast offerings of oatmeal,
canned fruit, scrambled powdered eggs,
spam, bread, jam, and the ever
present and necessary coffee, an endless supply of coffee. After
breakfast they
headed to the mission briefing to learn what was in store for
them. Access to the briefing was
strictly controlled and no one not on the mission or directly involved
in
its planning or administration could enter. After all were present and
settled down, a black cloth was pulled off the mission map and groans
were heard once the destination registered with the more veteran
airmen. Today's run would be a tough mission and credit
the crews two points toward the required fifty to complete their tour.
The
crews heard details of the mission
as presented on the huge map with the colored ribbons leading from
their base to primary and secondary targets. Last resort and targets of
opportunity were sometimes mentioned as well. Bombing accuracy was
stressed to the crews both to maximize the percentage of bombs on the
target area as well as to minimize civilian losses. Due to the
proximity of towns and living quarters to the military targets, bombing
errors in hundreds of yards could well translate to hundreds of
civilian casualties. All crew members were keenly
interested in
learning where the flak guns were believed to be located. The
map
showed the various outbound and return legs of the trip, as well as
course deflection points, the initial point for the start of the bomb
run, and, of course, the target itself. The briefing was completed
within 30 minutes and was followed by a prayer led by the chaplain. The
airmen then left for a separate specialty briefing for
information on
course, mission lead, and bomb drop. Pilots might be briefed
with
Squadron Commanders, Navigators by other officers in the War
Room,
and gunners by the Armament Officers.

After
briefings, they
headed out for the Quonset hut near Dolly Tower to pick up their
personal flight equipment which included their flight suits,
parachutes, first aid kits, escape and evasion kits, flight boots,
gloves, Mae
West life vests, leather helmets, steel flak helmets, flak vests, and
K-rations. The personnel issuing the parachutes often had sport with
the aircrew. One ruse was to say that "if the 'chute doesn't
work, bring it back for a replacement". Another good joke to pull
was to question an airman's weight and say that the chute they were
just issued was, say, only 24 feet in diameter and that they needed a
28 feet diameter chute. When the airman asked for the correct
sized chute they were told there were none in Italy, but that they'd
place an order. The crews had already made sure in the early
morning that they carried no significant personal effects with them
except for their dog tags and an identification card. Guys still
carried pocket knives and such, but no sense giving the enemy any more
information than necessary in the event of capture. The Stone crew
hopped aboard 6X6 trucks for the ride to their assigned bomber.

Their bomber was
fueled, equipped, and waiting for them out on the hardstand. Today,
they would be flying
in "K for King" in the tail-end Charlie slot. The ground crew chief
stood waiting at the bomber for the turnover of the aircraft from ground crew to the
air crew. He had the standard "Form One" with him which listed the repair,
maintenance, and declared issues of the aircraft. The pilot would add
any new items to it after the mission. Although there often wasn't much interaction between
the aircrews
and the ground crews, except for the ground crew chief who was there at
the aircraft at the start and finish of each mission, the aircrews
respected and relied upon the ground crew's work. The ground crews
always
did a great job making sure the bombers were in the best of shape
possible for a mission and that as many planes as possible were ready
to fly. Unlike
crews who may not be assigned to a dedicated aircraft, ground crews
were assigned to specific aircraft to familiarize themselves with
the aircraft's maintenance and repair history, and
its
nuances. Consequently, ground crews often became very attached to
aircraft for which they were responsible. Many aircraft were named and
had what almost amounted to personalities. Ground crews took great
pride in
their work and
considered the aircraft their own. The crews were grateful that the
ground crews looked out for them. More than one ground crewman was
known to break down upon hearing of the loss of his aircraft.

The enlisted crew checked
the
bombs, guns, ammo, and other equipment while the officers ran through
their own check lists. A mission ran on check lists, lots of them, from
start to
finish. Even though procedures became routine as lists were memorized
by rote repetition, standard
practice was to always use a physical list to ensure there were no
oversights. Bombs were checked twice, once on the ground and
again after the bomber was airborne. Finally, Sam Hamilton received the
signal clearing him for takeoff and the huge bomber taxied northwest
down the 6,000 foot long steel mat runway at a
magnetic bearing of about 330 degrees and made
its way into the
air. The Marston perforated steel planking was loud under the wheels
and the crew always knew when the wheels left the ground. Their bomber
was about 30 seconds behind the aircraft that had just taken off. The
bombers circled the base while they gained altitude and then entered
the formation with the other aircraft.

About an
hour or so away from enemy airspace, they lowered the
ball turret. They usually waited to lower it to maximize airspeed,
reduce drag, and conserve fuel. En
route to the target, they
encountered no
air defenses and there were reportedly only four anti-aircraft
guns. So far, so
good. The hulking bomber made it to the initial point and
the bomb run began. They
thought it
was
nice that the
designated target buildings were all lined up in a row. Nice and easy
to
bomb. However, the bombers came in low at about 17,000 feet
and made
easy targets on that sunny day for the anti-aircraft
gunners over three miles below them. One
aircraft was blown out of the sky with a direct flak hit per Bills's
memoirs, but I have not found any record of that event. Again, their
ship was hit with shrapnel,
this time taking out one of the turrets. Still, they dropped their
bombs and began their slow turn toward home, back along a pre-described
route. On
September 7,
1999 Bob Seidel was interviewed as part of the World War II Prisoners of
War Oral History
Project done by the
University of North Texas.
Bob indicated in
that interview that the crew could feel the bombs explode, feel the
concussion, even when their aircraft was as high as 22,000 feet.

Throughout
most of a mission, the airmen
were tied to their ship like an unborn child is to its mother's womb.
Radio cords for communication,
electrical cords for warmth, and oxygen hoses for the very breath they
breathed linked the men to their mother ship which seemed to do what it
could to keep the airmen safe and alive. Humans
were not meant to live in that lofty environment. Besides the dangers
presented by an enemy bent on killing the airmen,
nature itself had
designs on the crew's lives. Frostbite
was an ever present danger. The basic
ability to breathe was another. At elevations above 10,000
feet the air was thin
and the crew wore oxygen masks. Without
oxygen at high altitude a
man would pass
out within a few minutes and die a few minutes
later. The thing is,
they'd never feel it coming on.
Oxygen was supplied to the crew
at their stations from fixed tanks located on the aircraft. There were
also available
small portable tanks the crew could use to move from one
compartment to the other. I took these
pictures of stationary and portable oxygen tanks on my flight with the
B-24 Liberator "Witchcraft". The small green tank is located at a
waist gunner's
position and the overhead yellow tanks
are located aft of the
bomb bay. The regulators and the flexible tubes
feeding the oxygen were prone to freezing and crew members needed to be
sure to squeeze the rubber components from time to time to ensure the
oxygen was flowing and that there was no ice build-up. The pilot or
copilot would typically establish check-ins with all crew members,
often every 15 minutes, as a safety precaution. Checks were typically
done in order of location in the aircraft, from front to back - nose
turret, navigator, top turret, radio, waist positions, ball turret, and
tail turret.

Left:
460th
B-24s on a Mission to Salzburg - The
Smoke is from the
Bombing and Smudge Potsthe
Germans Would Light for
Smoke Cover. Right: A German Anti-Aircraft 88mm Flak Battery Fires at
Night.

Mission No. 3

October 16, 1944,
Monday.
Target:
Neudorf
Aircraft Engine Factory at Graz,
Austria.
The Neudorf factory was a secondary target that day. The primary
target was the Nibelungen tank works at St. Valentin, Austria, but
overcast prevented the formation from bombing that target, although
other bomb groups were able to release bombs and severely damaged two
assembly shops and several machine shops. The mission to Neudorf took
seven and a half hours and anti-aircraft fire was reported as intense
and accurate. The formation's bombs hit several buildings on the
factory grounds. This was the mission on which one of the bombers,
B-24H "White K for King", aircraft number 41-28883 piloted by
Alfred E. Pressler from the 460th Bomb Group/762nd Bomb Squad exploded
in mid-air and went down in flames. Of the ten man crew, all but two
were able to bail out over Yugoslavia; three bailed out from the waist
and five from the bomb bay. Five were captured and became prisoners of
war, three escaped. Two airmen, bombardier 2nd Lt. Richard A. Hanford
and nose gunner Cpl. Hubert C. Jackson, went down with the aircraft and
died on impact.

Another aircraft from dad's own group,
the 460th Bomb Group/763 Bomb Squad's own "O for Oboe" named
Ashcan Charlie and piloted
by
2nd Lt. Roger B. Berry took a
direct flak
hit
just after bombs were released. The plane "just
disintegrated" as one nearby crew reported. Richard "Dick" Schneider, a
763rd Bomb Squad tail gunner, saw the explosion and said the aircraft
disappeared into tiny pieces like a clay pigeon does when hit directly
by a shotgun blast on the trap and skeet range. Witnesses reported two chutes opening and a
third on fire and falling. Amazingly, somehow two crew members survived. Missing Air Crew Reports 9198 and
9303, respectively, document the losses of Pressler's and Berry's
aircraft and crews over Austria. There
was
no hiding, no cover, and no running away for the bombers that
day. All they
could do is take whatever the enemy threw at them,
feel the concussion
of the nearby explosions,
listen to the spray
of shrapnel against their ship, watch daylight stream in through the
holes, hold their course,
and pray to almighty God it would pass soon. It
was flaming hell in the sky that cold fall day over
Austria, but dad
and the rest of his crew returned safely to "Bomber City",
their
airbase home
in
Spinazzola, Italy, only to don their flight gear and climb back in
their bomber the next day to do it all over again in a different part
of Europe. Bomber City was a nickname given to the Spinazzola airbase.
Spinazzola was the small city about seven miles to the slight
northwest. During Col. Bertram Harrison's tenure as base
commander, some referred
to the base as Harrison's Flats. There was a closer town the
crews would sometimes visit, Poggiorsini, about 2.5 miles southeast of
the base. Generally speaking, however, the airmen were advised not to
visit the Italian towns. There were still many fascist sympathizers in
the country and in fact portions of mostly northern Italy were still
occupied by
Germans.

The
look and feel of the
base changed over time. Originally, the base was essentially
a
tent city and a quagmire of mud due to the frequent rains.
Crews
soon found out that with minimal shared cost, maybe $200
total,
they could hire
locals to build small walled huts out of the indigenous tufa stone
quarried nearby, provided the crew supplied the materials. Some huts
were more like homes and had
fireplaces and tile roofs. When a crew who "owned" such a
tufa
block structure did not return from a mission, the hut could be sold to
another crew and the base commander would ensure that the funds were
divided and sent to the next of kin of the last owners. Dad's crew was
actively working on their own hut in preparation for winter. They had
pooled money and contracted with a local to construct a hut with
windows, a door, and a tile roof. They did well on the price. The cost
was $100 and 10 cartons of cigarettes. Somehow, the
improvements taking place at the airbase did not go unnoticed by the
Germans. Berlin Sally, the German equivalent of Tokyo Rose,
noted
in one of her broadcasts that the airmen's "pretty little white homes"
would be "just piles of dust after the Luftwaffe is through with you".Below
is a picture
taken of a
460th bomber on dad's October 16th mission. The
engine cowls appear as
if
they could possibly be yellow making it a 763rd bomb squad
aircraft, so perhaps dad or another
airman he knew was in this
aircraft.

Left, A
B-24 During a
Mission Dad was on, over Graz-Neudorf. Right, Dad and Crew Members
During Training at Chatham Field, GA. Left to Right are: John Bills,
Otto Mattiza, John
Murphy, Dana Satterfield, and Dad.

Mission No. 4

October 17, 1944, Tuesday.
Target:
Marshalling
Yards (railroad staging facility) at Maribor,
Yugoslavia.The
crew was flying
in yellow "A for Able" in the number 4 position. Marshalling
yards are where box cars and other rail cars of all sorts are linked
together prior to their departure or disassembled upon their arrival.
Destruction of key transportation facilities such as this was
critical for the disruption of commerce, industry, and military
endeavors and
instrumental in the ultimate defeat of the Germans. On this mission, 17
bombers from the 460th bomb group and one bomber from the 464th bombed
the marshalling yard through overcast. The results could not be
observed.

Maribor was not the only target for the 460th that day. 2nd Lt. Samuel
H. Northcross was piloting "N for Nan", aircraft number 44-41233
from
the 460th Bomb Group/762nd Bomb Squad was on a mission that day to the
Vienna
south oil depot. The crew was in flak over the target and was hit
and
had to feather the number one engine. The aircraft was last seen
under
control, but losing altitude, and entering the undercast. The crew bailed out over Yugoslavia and were captured.
One crew member, Leonard A. Siegfried, was interviewed by his
local newspaper in 2015. He indicated it was his second time
shot
down, but that this time he was captured. Siegfried was imprisoned at
Stalag IV and survived the death march after the Stalag was evacuated
due to the Russian advance. More on that horrendous event
later. As Siegfried noted this
was the 2nd time that he and some of the Northcross crew were shot
down. They were first shot down on August 27, 1944 on a mission to
Blechhammer, Germany. Their ship on that mission the "A for Able",
aircraft number 42-51292. Witnesses indicate the ship had all
engines running and appeared under control but just veered out of
formation. I received some information from the daughter of
one of
the crew members on that mission. She indicated her father, Sgt. Howard
E.
McClain, was able to bail out and broke his leg on landing. He was
listed as missing in action for about six weeks. Local farmers hid him
under their house in the crawl space. They provided him with
food
and water and he eventually found a donkey to ride back to friendly
lines. Dad and his crew were luckier on their mission. They
all
made it back.

A
460th B-24
Dropping Fragmentation Bombs over the airdrome at Neuburg, Austria on
March 26, 1945; Dad with Bomb During Training. The Neuburg airdrome
Complex after Bombing. Note the numerous, concentrated bomb craters
pockmarking the entire area.

Mission No. 5

October 20, 1944,
Friday.
Target:
Marshalling
Yards (railroad staging facility) at Rosenheim,
Germany. Rosenheim
is located between Salzburg
and Munich.On this seven and a half hour mission, the Munich
marshalling yards had been the primary
target, but weather caused the armada to attack Rosenheim, the first
alternate target. This was the day that new Base
Commander
John Price flew his first mission with the 460th Bomb Group.
This
was also the
tragic mission where there was a mid-air collision between
two aircraft from dad's own squadron at 11:10 AM over the Gulf of
Venice. Pilot Lt. Seldon C.
Campbell was
flying "O for Oboe" tight under Lt. Francis E. Galarneau's "F for Fox".
Galarneau
was flying
lead when Campbell's plane began to move in front of
him from below. Campbell's
plane
began to rise and his plane touched the underside of
Galarneau's causing Galarneau's B-24 to begin to tip on its
side.
The
crew inside Galarneau's
bomber was bounced from ceiling to
floor
before Galarneau could
level off and start to pull away. Galarneau's propellers began
to chop
away at Campbell's aircraft and cut it in
half. Pieces of
metal went everywhere. One of Galarneau's crew members, waist gunner
Ray Weber (no
relation to my dad) wrote "I saw a head hit the side of our fuselage
and guts tangled around the right wing". During an interview
for
the missing air crew report, Cpl. Willie W. Pollard on a nearby
aircraft reported seeing Campbell's entire tail section fly by his
aircraft. Other
crewmen saw it too. Dick Schneider of the John T. "Jack" Bilek crew was
a tail gunner on the
763rd BS aircraft flying in front of the Galarneau and Campbell
aircrafts. He indicates in a videoed interview recorded on January 16,
2003 that he clearly saw two airmen from the Campbell crew who, for an
instant frozen in time, appeared to be standing in mid-air outside the
severed bomber with their Mae West life vests on and no
parachutes. It
was like a bad dream as he
watched them fall away.

Bernie
Sturtz, the tail gunner in the 460th's aircraft Bottoms Up, saw the
front half of the plane power straight down into the Adriatic Sea,
driven hard by the four engines which were still running. Three men
from Galarneau's crew
bailed
out over the sea and seven remained onboard. The three airmen
who
jumped - waist gunner Wayne C. Miller, airman Jack Benedetti, and
airman Ivan A. Mechling, Jr. - were listed as killed in action.

The
accident caused some of the aircraft in the formation to scatter. Some
fell out of formation to avoid the collision and lost the formation in
the clouds. Some lagged behind unable to rejoin the formation. One such
aircraft
piloted by John T. "Jack" Bilek opted to bomb Axis-controlled
Trieste harbor
as a target of opportunity.

After
freeing flight engineer/nose gunner Frederick J. "Fred" Dusse who was
trapped
inside his nose turret gun position due to the collision, Galarneau had
his
crew vote on whether to continue on to Yugoslavia with two
remaining engines, bail out, or try to make it back to base. Galarneau
took the
vote because he wanted buy-in from the remaining crew since they were
on two engines, the bomb bay doors would not open, they had a full
bomb load with which they may have to land, and the wheel hydraulics
were not functioning. Going home
would be at least as risky as continuing on. The crew voted on
returning to base. En route home, they were able to release the bombs
through the
closed bomb bay doors and watched as the doors were demolished as the
bombs
crashed through them.They were
later able to hand crank
the
landing gear down and land safely. It
was probably not the smooth textbook landing referred to in the
period's slang as a "grease job landing", but given the circumstances
it was more than adequate. Later it
was learned that some of the crew heard "Bail out!" as opposed to
"Prepare to bail out" as Galarneau indicated he said.

Dennis R. Okerstrom's novel, The
Final Mission of Bottoms Up: A World
War II Pilot's Story,
is about the last mission of Bottoms
Up, the
B-24 bomber referenced above from the 460th BG, 760th BS piloted by
Randal Darden and copiloted by Lee Lamar. Okerstrom's novel
contains a
reference to
a narrative report on the collision of Campbell's and
Galarneau's bombers dated one day after the incident. It indicates the
accident as occurring over the Gulf of Venice and that all crew of
Campbell's aircraft were
lost after it was chopped to pieces and crashed into the sea. The
report further indicates that the three
who jumped from Galarneau's bomber were lost as well. The
names of
those
thirteen men (the ten who comprised the Campbell crew and the three
from the Galarneau crew) are inscribed on the Wall of the Missing at
the
Florence
American Cemetery, where in total 1,409 names are recorded. In
recognition of their service and sacrifice, I record
the names of the Galarneau and Campbell crews here:

Missing Air Crew Reports 9333 and 9334 document the loss of
Campbell's entire crew and Galarneau's three crew members,
respectively, over the Mediterranean Sea. In correspondence
with Francis
E. Galarneau's daughter, Nancy Galarneau Kane, I learned that Francis
had a long and successful career with the Air Force. He was
one of
a rare breed. He was what was referred to as a "Sergeant Pilot" and
progressed through the ranks and served in the Korean and Viet Nam
wars, ending his career as a Commander of a base in Japan. Ray Weber,
one of Galarneau's crew members, never forgot his best friend and
crewmate, Wayne Miller, who was one of the three who jumped from the
Galarneau aircraft. One of Ray's sons, Jim Weber, informed me that his
dad named one of Jim's brothers "Wayne" in remembrance of his
old
war pal.

Additionally, and more
relevant to this story, my research indicates that Lt. Morris Caust,
whom we will learn more of later, was also part of Galarneau's crew
that October day and lived to fly another tragic mission as a radar
navigator on November 16, 1944, as part of dad's crew on his tenth
mission. Howard E. McCue, a member of the Galarneau crew on October
20th, was later lost in action on November 11, 1944 while part of the
Walter C. Martin, Jr. crew due to another mid-air collision during an
aborted mission dad was on. The November 11th mission and Walter C.
Martin, Jr. crew losses were even more personally tragic for dad and
the rest of the original crew as we will see in the mission description
later.

Far above
left,
A
B-24 from the 460th's 760th Bomb Squad Drops a Bomb; far above right,
an
earlier
version B-24H named "Hangar Queen" of dad's own 460th
BG/763rd
BS. Above left, a 460th BG/760th BS B-24 with tail damage from a
September
22, 1944 mission to the Oberweisenfeld BMW factory near Munich; above
right, an unknown 460th BG B-24 in flight. Below
are two aircraft
from the 460th BG 761st BS - left, "Slick
Chick With A Hot Lick", also known as "Red M for
Mike"; and right, "T. S. Express".

Campbell's
tragic formation
mishap clearly shows the dangers crews encountered were not
always from an enemy attack. Childer's also provides a story
worthy of note in his nicely written and informative novel. He
recounts one mission starting with a white-knuckled
take-off in
fog so heavy the pilot could not see past the nose of the
bomber. Other missions had been postponed for lesser weather concerns
and field conditions. Cloud cover continued over the target, a
synthetic oil
refinery in Bottrop on the northern fringe of the Ruhr, but radar
provided confirmation that the target was down there beneath the
clouds. It was bombs away and
the bombardier successfully
dropped his bombs on target. Upon return, the
airfield
was still in a thick, soupy fog and the harrowing landing was by
instruments. The B-24 came in fast and high, overshooting the start of
the runway, eating up the available
distance required for stopping. A pass and retry was not
possible because of the danger of collision in the dense
fog. The
plane left long patches of thick rubber on the landing strip all the
way to the end of the runway. As the aircraft skidded toward the final
stopping point,
the crew feared their bomber would flip over or skitter off the runway
and
plow into tents and other buildings. Once the crew exited their
Liberator, the ground crew greeted the shaking crew at the hatches and
bomb bays,
hooting and hollering to cheer the successful landing. While a major
congratulated the shaking pilot on the bomb run and impossible landing,
another nerve-wracked crew member vomited in the muddy snow on the
other side of the
plane, visibly trembling from the adrenaline rush and the intensity of
the
landing.

Crews
were typically served coffee and some small snack, often doughnuts, by American Red Cross girls after
a mission. The ladies, affectionately referred to as "Doughnut Dollies" provided warm
doughnuts prepared in the close quarters of their Clubmobiles to the
grateful servicemen. Most crew members had been without food for
hours, their last meal either being breakfast
that morning or some cold K-rations in the air after re-entering safe
airspace after the bomb run. Items like canned goods and chocolate from
the K-rations were often kept inside a crew member's heavy or heated
flight suit so they wouldn't freeze at altitude and were kept soft
enough to be eaten. Sometimes after a
tough mission the medical officer would give the crew two
ounces
of
bourbon. Often, that bourbon was saved or hoarded for enjoyment
or
celebration later in greater volume. Some airmen found that the
grapefruit juice served at the mess tent was best used by mixing it
with
the liquor. No doubt there were missions, like
the one above, where those two ounces of bourbon were gratefully
accepted and quaffed immediately. While the aircrews wound down from
the mission, ground crews were already assessing the condition of the
aircraft. Most would be repaired, but often a few were too badly
damaged to be saved. Those less fortunate aircraft were hauled to
"Hangar Queen Alley", the bomber bone yard located on the
base. Salvageable parts would be eventually reused on other
aircraft.

In Philip A. St. John's book entitled B-24
Liberator Legend: The Plane - The Peoplehe
quotes one pilot's recollections of a
mission to the Messerschmitt factory at Regensburg, Germany and the
harrowing flight back to base on only two engines and no hydraulic
control. The plane had been continuously losing altitude and the
dedicated crew had passed on a few opportunities to bail out near
rescue ships in the Adriatic Sea, preferring to stay with their captain
and ship and in hope of making it home. They reached their
airstrip at an altitude of only 1,500 feet, no room left for a second
fly-by over the field. The tail gunner fired red flares to alert the
tower of their dire condition and hoped the tower saw their two
feathered engines. Some relief came to the crew when the tower fired
its own red flares to clear the runway for landing, giving priority to
their damaged aircraft. The ship rolled to a safe stop. The power
settings had been so high and the engines had been run so hard and long
to keep the aircraft airborne on the long trip back and across the
Adriatic Sea that after the engines were shut off, some of the internal
components actually melted.

460th
B-24s over Oswiecim, Poland on a Mission to an Oil Refinery in
1944; Dad on Jeep with Bob Seidel, Chatham Field, 1944.

Dolly
Tower, shown below, was the control tower at the
airfield in Spinazzola. I am sure that many an airman was
glad to
see Dolly Tower come into view after a long, arduous
mission. Dolly Tower and the steel mat runways were a sign of
home
and safety. Dolly Tower also served to give the crews the final "go
ahead" or "stand down" instruction while they waited on the airfield
for takeoff. A green flare fired from Dolly Tower meant the mission
was a "go", two red flares meant "stand down".

The
Welcomed Site of Dolly Tower

Mission No. 6

October 23, 1944,
Monday.
Target: M.A.N. Diesel Submarine Engine Factory in Augsburg, Germany.
This was another mission into the heartland of Germany, Bavaria in this
case. The target was a factory that produced diesel engines for
submarines. The crew's pilot on this mission was a Lt. Wagner
instead of Sam Hamilton. During pre-flight checks Dana Satterfield and
Hal Adams got into an argument about some task. Yelling commenced and
then the two were fighting. One was actually choking the other while
the rest of the enlisted men watched. Lt. Wagner approached and
broke up the fight. He shook his head in dismay and asked rhetorically,
"What kind of God-damned bunch of gunners did I inherit for this
mission?" Cleary nerves were beginning to wear. After the pilot got his
crew back in line and all the gear was stowed, the crew got boarded and
ran through their various check lists. The rote practices got
their minds off the turmoil that had just transpired and they
functioned as the crew they were trained to be. They assumed
their takeoff positions and began their taxi down the runway thirty
seconds after the aircraft ahead of them. The roar of the four
engines was deafening and the power caused the aircraft to shake and
rumble violently. But all that was normal to them by now.
This vibration and rumbling decreased significantly as the wheels left
the runway and were retracted. The lift generated by the elegant
and slender Davis wings turned the aircraft from a lumbering hulk some,
like B-17 crews, likened to a crate with wings into a much more
graceful warbird. They spiraled upward, making wide turns not far
from base while they gained altitude in preparation of joining the
formation. They did this so that the formation would not be
scattered a great distance over the land and far from base before it
formed. This practice cost time and fuel, but greatly added to
the safety of all the aircraft by preventing stragglers and allowed a
much tighter formation to be formed in known weather conditions close
to base. What the weather did at altitude farther from Spinazzola
was always subject to change.

Details of the mission are
sparse. What is known is that the mission force was comprised of
79 bombers from the 460th and 485th bomb groups and the mission
duration was recorded as eight and a half hours. In all, there
were 83 sorties which resulted in 181.70 tons of bombs dropped. The
mission was a long one, almost nine hours start to finish and the
formation experienced flak at Brenner Pass through the Alps, at
Innsbruck, and over the target itself.

The 15th Army Air Force
as a whole had several missions on this day. Around 500 B-24s and B-17s
bombed the Skoda armament works at Plzen, Czechoslovakia; in Germany,
32 B-24s bombed a marshalling yard at Rosenheim, 34 B-24s bomb an
industrial area at Plauen, 67 B-24s bomb the BMW aircraft engine plant
at Munich, 79 B-24s, including dad's crew, bomb the M.A.N.
(Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg) diesel submarine engine factory at
Augsburg, and 63 B-24s bomb the Winterhafen oil storage depot at
Regensburg; in northern Italy they hit communications targets, a
marshalling yard at Bressanone, some bridges at or near Casarsa della
Delizia, Pordenone, Santo Stino di Livenza, and Maniago, and a rail
line running north to the Brenner area. Fighters escorted the missions
to Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Dad
(with Camera) & Some of the Crew
Miss Fortune of
the
460th BG,760th BS

In
the picture above left are, from left to right, Harold Adams, Bob
Seidel,
John Bills, and Dick Weber. The other photo is of "Miss
Fortune"
a B-24H from their bomb group's 760th Bomb Squad. Miss
Fortune was shot down on June 30, 1944 over Hungary and the body of
tail gunner S/Sgt. Martin F. Troy, the last missing crewman, was found
63 years later, in 2007, amongst the wreckage.

November 1944

November
came to southern Italy with a sodden vengeance - wet, cold, and
loaded
with rain,
snow, and the ever-present mud that would suck your boots off your feet
as you
walked. Missions were few and far between as Europe began to
ebb
toward what would be a record breaking winter. Men
continued
to work on fortifying their living quarters against the wind
and cold
and sought what comforts they could. The Italian workers were
making good progress on dad's crew's hut and the walls were about four
feet high now. Just having half walls helped to break the
wind, reduced tent
flapping, and virtually eliminated the stormwater
runoff from entering the tent. Endless hours were spent
writing letters home to friends and relatives to stay busy and to
prompt the return letters and boxes they so much appreciated.
Reading and card games helped to pass the time. Ensuring
the heater
remained operational and fueled was a priority. A trip to Bari
would have been a highlight for the respite from the bleak
camp. A chance
to visit the PX and pick up some needed supplies would have
been a blessing. Catching
a USO show would have been the ultimate. One 460th airman noted that
during his time at Spinazzola, Roy Rogers and Trigger, the Lone Ranger,
and Joe Louis came to provide entertainment for the soldiers.

Missions seemed like a double-edged sword. They gave
the crew something to do, something they had been trained to do, and
were a break in the monotony of life at a base grounded due to weather,
but with a mission came the ever present risk or injury, death, or the
loss of a friend or crewmate. The missions did come and the crews
stepped up to perform their duties.

Mission
No. 7

November
5, 1944, Sunday. Target: Floridsdorf Oil
Refinery, Vienna, Austria. Seven bombers from
dad's group set off
to bomb troop concentrations at Podgorica, Yugoslavia, but dad and a
huge force headed for heavily fortified Vienna.Comprised
of approximately 500 B-24s and
B-17s, this was the largest air assault against a
single target ever
assembled during World War
II at that point and dad was part of it. Oil and its products were the
lifeblood
of the German war machine. Missions like this were a staple
of
the Allied attack strategy. The fact that refineries had been
previously bombarded was one reason why German air coverage of targets
was not what it had been earlier in the war. Fuel, which could be
synthesized, was precious and limited. Oil was perhaps even more
precious because, unlike fuel which could be synthesized from coal or coke, lubricants had to be made from
petroleum. Petroleum provided grease, lubricating oil, paraffin,
kerosene, and other necessary products. The group would be able
to
bomb through the cloudy skies using
radar in the lead ship. Bombardier John Murphy opened the bomb bay
doors and watched for the lead ship's bomb drop. When the lead aircraft
dropped its payload the other aircraft in the formation toggled their
bombs. Murphy toggled his switch like all the others and felt the
aircraft lift when it was shed of its deadly weight. Feeling the lift
and recognizing it as confirmation of the drop Murphy radioed "Bombs
away!" and activated the bomb bay door switch again to close the doors.
When he had confirmation of its closure he interommed "Bomb bay doors
closed". They had completed what they were paid to do. Again, Dad's
crew was able to deliver
its
payload
and
return safely to the base at Spinazzola. One crew
was not as
lucky. I
have
found Missing Air Crew Report 9673 indicating aircraft
number 42-52028 "Yellow W" piloted
by 2nd Lt. Raymond H. Meadows from dad's own 460th BG, 763rd BS
was lost that day over Austria. All contact with the Meadows B-24J
aircraft was lost after last radio contact at 12:46 PM when Meadows,
still over Vienna, had confirmed his bomb drop. The report is a brief
five pages and there are no witness reports indicating what may have
happened, but fortunately all crew are listed in the report as
returned, although no indication is provided as to when or under what
circumstances. By
the way, Sam Hamilton was promoted to 1st Lt. two days after this
mission. One picture, below, was taken on this November 5,
1944 mission and demonstrates the flak that was encountered.

Above, a
460th B-24 with an Engine on Fire over theAdriatic
Sea after Being
Hit by Flak; Dad on Jeep, Chatham Field, GA 1944. Below,
460th
aircraft in flak on dad's November 5, 1944 mission to Vienna.

One
overarching observation became obvious in my
research. The
crews had a very real sense of duty that I am sure was instilled at
every opportunity during their training regimen. The focus was on the
prime objective to get the bombs to the target. After the drop, there
was some relief as they wheeled away. I suspect
a large part of the intense effort or sense of duty was certainly
incentivized by a mission credit possibly depending on the actual bomb
drop. The
crew learned quickly that the lift experienced in the aircraft once the
weight of the bombs left the aircraft was the signal of a completed job allowing them to turn off the
run and head home as quickly as possible. There
was a common expression at the time, that the bomb run was for Uncle
Sam but after the bombs dropped the crews "were flying for themselves".
That is unless, of course, they were to take bomb target photos.
If their mission required post-bombing photographs they would have to
hold their bomb run course for maybe 15 additional seconds or so,
depending on bombing altitude, to photograph the exploding bombs for
analysis of bombing accuracy later on. Those extra seconds of
holding altitude, speed, and heading after feeling the lift seemed the
longest of the mission.

Mission
No. 8

November
11, 1944, Saturday. Target: Linz, Austria.
The mission began like other missions, but was aborted over
Adriatic
Sea
near the coast of Yugoslavia due to weather conditions. In fact, for
all of the 15th Army Air Force, bad weather grounded over 100 other
heavy bombers, and more than 320 were recalled before reaching their
target areas. Aborted missions were considered "non-combat sorties" and
did not count toward the tally of
required completed missions. They were tough on a crew due to the
buildup of the mission, all the preparations, risking the harrowing
taxiing and takeoff and the dread as the 60 ton warbird labored into
the sky. It
seems
that
the crew dropped their bombs over the Adriatic Sea in any event,
perhaps to be rid of them for safe
landing,
but I am uncertain if this was standard protocol or not.
The practice of jettisoning bombs over water earned the airmen the
disparaging title of "fish killers". For whatever reason,
crew member Murphy or Adams forgot to open the bomb bay doors and the
500 lb.
bombs tore open the doors and created a good deal of damage to the
aircraft as
they were dropped. Crew member, Bob Seidel, thought
that the
doors jammed because of mud in the door runners. The
flapping sheets and torn pieces of airplane skin needed to be tied down
to prevent further damage to the aircraft and its crew.
Accidents
like that happened on those missions. Bob Seidel's memoirs
describe his seeing a mid-air collision between two B-24s on one
mission. He
also describes how one of his crew members test fired his turret
machine guns and almost took out another B-24 bomber. On one
mission, dad was tossing out chaff from his bay window and had not
activated the safety on his .50 caliber. He tripped and fell against the
gun and his
parachute harness hung up on the trigger and several .50 cal. rounds sheared of a good portion of the left vertical
stabilizer and damaged the rudder. He caught hell for that one at the
debriefing. The .50 caliber was a powerful weapon.
When all
guns were firing the sound even drowned out the roar of the four 1,200
horsepower engines. Okerstrom indicates that the
pilot and
copilot could feel the shock through
their control columns of the big
.50 calibers as they fired.

You
might wonder how loud it was on a B-24, even without the guns roaring
and the flak booming. During April 2013 I flew on the Collings
Foundation's Commemorative Air Force's B-24 Witchcraft along
with
a few friends. I conducted an impromptu test during takeoff.
I was sitting on the floor of the aircraft with my back
against
the bulkhead separating the waist from the bomb
bay. My friend was seated immediately next to me, shoulder to shoulder.
As we taxied down the runway I shouted as loud as I possibly
could. My friend literally never heard a sound from me.
The
picture to the left is of me inflight aboard the Witchcraft at my dad's
position as right waist gunner. I am wearing my dad's gunner wings in
remembrance of him on this Liberator flight.

In regard to accidents, I've read one account of an accident involving
the 461st bomb group. As the group was on its bomb
run, the
navigator in the formation's lead aircraft accidentally dropped his
bombs prematurely when his heavy coat caught on the bomb toggle switch.
The aircraft in the formation, following normal procedures, toggled
their bombs as well. But sometimes
accidents yielded positive results. On one mission, some of
the
crew had seen an odd, sand-colored, older model B-24D come into
formation and thought
it was strange, but figured it was a lost plane from another bomb
group. They had heard that some groups were still flying those old
warbirds. When it came time to drop bombs, the odd plane was
bombed
and totally destroyed by a B-24 above it. Dad's
crew learned
in debriefing after the mission that the odd plane was a B-24
that
had been recovered by the Germans who flew it into the
formation
so they could radio back the formation's altitude, speed, and bearing
information to the anti-aircraft batteries. To counter this strategy,
on some missions,
the
rear of the fuselage or tail would be painted with special
identification stripes or other markings (other than the normal
markings) to prevent such enemy infiltration.

A
B-24 Captured by the
Germans and
Remarked for Their Use; Dad, Probably on Leave in Columbus, OH in 1943
or 1944 Before Going Overseas

Even though dad's mission this day was aborted, it still
proved to
be a tragic one. On this mission original crew member Emmett "Bo"
Barger, shown in the crew photo at the top of this page and below, was
flying
with
another crew of the 763rd. His plane, piloted by Walter C.
Martin,
Jr.,
was lost
and never found. There were no witnesses to what happened
because
of heavy cloud cover, but per Missing Air Crew Report No. 9749 his
ship, serial no. 42-51737,
was last seen near the Yugoslavian coast. The body of one
crew
member, Radio Operator Lawrence F. Logan, was later
found
about 15 miles south of St. Andrea, a Yugoslavian island also known as
Andrija or Sveti Andrija (Croatian for Saint Andrew), by the crew of
a fishing boat. A search was
conducted of the area and
coastline near where the body was found,
but no other bodies
were recovered.

Andrija
is an island located about 14 nautical miles
west of a larger then British- and Yugoslavian-controlled island, Vis,
on which the bomber crews would land
during emergency situations if they could not make it across the
Adriatic Sea on their route back to their home base. Vis was about 150
miles due sourth of their base. Vis had seen many changes
throughout the war. At one time it had been the headquarters of Marshal
Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslavian resistance leader, and had
been
occupied by the Italians and the Germans as well. We'll learn more of
Josip Broz Tito later.

It
is
believed that once the Martin aircraft entered the clouds it collided
with another B-24 on the aborted mission, the 460th Bomb Group, 762nd
Bomb Squad's "White P for Peter" B-24 piloted by Horace W. Rhodes and
that both planes went down in the Adriatic Sea. The
White P was last seen under control and entering the clouds and the
collision likely occurred around 23,000 feet. Missing Air Crew
Report No. 9747 for the Rhodes B-24 documents the loss of that
aircraft. All crew were lost and no bodies were recovered from the
Rhodes crew. My research also indicates that Horace Rhodes
was
involved in a landing accident on September 15, 1944 while piloting
aircraft no. 42-52421.

Bo Barger's name, along with the names of the other crew members of
both Liberators, is on the Wall of the Missing at the
Sicily-Rome American Cemetery. In all, there are 3,095 names of missing
United States military personnel engraved on the white Carrara marble
walls of the cool, windowless chapel where you can sit on the walnut
pews and contemplate the loss of so many young lives whose remains were
never found. An inscription over one alcove reads:

"Here are recorded
the names of
Americans who gave their lives in the service of their country and who
sleep in unknown graves".

Bo Barger's parents
established a scholarship fund in his name at the
Washington & Lee University. It exists to this day. The website
describing it reads "Emmett Warren Barger, Jr., Class of 1945.
Established by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Emmett Warren Barger,
Waynesboro, Virginia, and friends." My research indicates that
Bo's father was a veteran of WWI and, at the age of 54, went to the
enlistment office and registered for the WWII draft.

I include the names of the Martin and Rhodes crew here in their memory:

A
B-24 From Dad's Own 460th BG, 763rd BS on Fire over Vienna June 16,
1944
After Attack by a
German ME-109. Crewman Herbert A. Wilson climbs out the Escape
Hatch behind
the Cockpit. [The aircraft later broke in half. Herbert
Wilson
survived and became a POW. He endured the Death March from
Stalag
IV, and later lived his life in Niles, OH with his wife and family.]
Right, dad at Chatham Field, GA.

Mission
No. 9

November
15, 1944, Wednesday. Target: Linz Benzol Plant; Linz,
Austria.This
was a bombing run on a chemical facility. Benzol was used as a motor
fuel substitute and these factories and refineries augmented the
traditional German fuel supplies made from crude oil. It was foggy at
the airfield and navigation was by dead reckoning for a while. Dad's
aircraft was one of only five aircraft from his bomb group on this
mission, although records show that the four bomb groups of the 55th Bomb Wing overall provided 18
aircraft for the mission. This small force was equipped with radar capability and was
considered a "Lone Wolf" mission. I discuss radar and other technological advancements in the following mission. Of
those 18 55th Bomb Wing aircraft, nine bombed the primary
target, two bombed an alternate target of opportunity due to issues
with their H2X radar (aka pathfinder) equipment, and seven aircraft
aborted the
mission. Of those aircraft which aborted, two did so due to
pathfinder equipment issues, two due to mechanical issues, and three
for other reasons. Lone Wolf missions were flown
by small groups of unescorted aircraft under non-visual conditions by
day or night. Their primary targets were high priority. The
15th Army Air Force officially began Lone Wolf missions on an
experimental basis on October 25, 1944. The Lone Wolf concept
stemmed from experience gained during nighttime reconnaissance flights
and long-distance missions that required take off during early morning
dark conditions. One such early morning take off was in support
of the D-Day invasion in June 1944 during which the 15th Army Air Force
provided troop support. The Army Air Force recognized from these
experiences that qualified crews in aircraft equipped with pathfinder
devices could effectively operate in low visibility (i.e., dark and/or
cloud cover) conditions and
realize advantages not offered during daytime
raids. Initially,
in June and July of 1944, and as further prelude to evaluating the
concept of nighttime and low visibility mission capability using small
forces of specially equipped aircraft, the 15th Army Air Force equipped
two B-17s and one B-24 with pathfinder equipment to be used as
reconnaissance aircraft for nighttime operation in enemy
airspace. Collectively, these experiences demonstrated to the
15th Army Air Force leadership the viability and feasibility of the
Lone Wolf concept. As a result, the 15th Army Air Force's Lone
Wolf operations were established to achieve four distinct objectives:
1) destroy enemy targets assigned as priority commitments; 2) adversely
affect the level of enemy morale; 3) interrupt the usual wartime
activities of the enemy by forcing his population to take refuge in
air-raid shelters; and 4) maintain the pressure of attack on
Southern Germany.

In
December 1944 General Nathan F. Twining, Commander of the 15th Army Air
Force, had this to say in reference to Lone Wolf missions and the
technology that made them possible:

"It
is the continuing commitment of the 15th Air Force to destroy the enemy
whenever and wherever he can be attacked. His industries must be
demolished, his communications disrupted, his resources depleted, his
mode of living must be made so utterly hopeless that his nation will
collapse in a total defeat. For more than a year the Axis has felt the
oppressive weight of daylight visual attacks by formations of the 15th
Air Force. Since the middle summer months the Hun has experienced
ever-increasing daylight non-visual as well as visual bombings
delivered by this Air Force. Now, because of recent technical and
tactical developments, and through the courageous efforts and
perseverance of our air and ground crews, the enemy is being subjected
to attacks both by night and by day, and fair weather and foul. Our
pressure upon him is crushing. No longer at any time is he secured from
the might of our operations. To the maximum limit of its capabilities
the 15th Air Force continues to fulfill its commitment toward ultimate
Allied victory."

In
regard to impacting enemy morale not just by the Lone Wolf operations
but by the relentless daytime precision bombing there was definitely an
effect of 15th Army Airforce missions and strategy on the civilian
population, the Wehrmacht, and the German leadership. Hitler's
Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer had this
to recount in his memoir after the war. "I could see the omens of
the war's end almost every day in the blue southern sky when, flying
provocatively low, the bombers of the American 15th Air Force crossed
the Alps from their Italian bases to attack German industrial targets".

The early radar, or pathfinder equipment,
allowed the bombers to identify and bomb targets through
undercast. Nighttime Lone Wolf raids offered additional security
due to the reduced size of the formation, usually one, two, or no more
than six aircraft on a mission or wave. Nighttime missions
significantly reduced the likelihood of fighter attack. While the
Germans possessed technology to direct fighter aircraft to the
proximity of Lone Wolf bombers, actually firing upon a bomber still
required visual identification, target acquisition, and sighting.

Lone
Wolf aircraft differed from normal aircraft, even from those non-Lone
Wolf aircraft that were already equipped with the pathfinder
equipment. Lone Wolf aircraft had other additional
modifications. They had been fitted with flame suppression or
dampener kits to reduce engine exhaust flames to reduce nighttime
visibility, the pathfinder equipment was provided some heating and
pressurization enhancements, and the aircraft was painted a dark dull
gray color as camouflage. Perhaps most important is that the
crews were provided specialized training on nighttime and low
visibility flying. Lone Wolf missions were cancelled if
visibility was good. The last thing a Lone Wolf crew wanted was
for conditions to be considered "CAVU", the acronym for "Ceiling And
Visibility Unlimited". In fact, one source indicates that if
visibility was any better than 10/10 (indicating full cloud coverage)
the mission would be cancelled. Lone Wolf missions allowed
constant pressure via fear of attack to be put on the enemy. No
longer could a cloudy day provide the enemy assurance that they would
not be bombed. Previously, it had been noted that factory
production and repair efforts were increased on cloudy days. Lone Wolf
missions served other purposes too. James F. Allen, a 460th Bomb
Group/760th Bomb Squad airman describes one Lone Wolf mission in a May
7, 2004 interview done the National Mall in Washington, DC. He notes
that the objective of one Lone Wolf mission he was on was
to drop off by parachute a British communications officer
into Germany. He notes that the officer was oddly in full
dress uniform and supposedly he was to establish a communications
outpost.

The
above image shows the operational area and range of the 15th Army Air
Force as of December 1944 as well as the targets of the Lone Wolf
missions from October 25th to December. Also
on this mission was the aircraft Princess Carole piloted by Walter
Mattson and the subject of his book entitled Lone Wolf In Enemy
Skies. Two of the aircraft turned back, one because of radar
equipment problems and the other due to engine problems. The remaining
three aircraft dropped six tons of 500 lb. bombs on target. For the
entire mission force, time over target was from 11:20 AM until 11:40
AM. There was flak that day, and it was exploding at their
altitude, but it trailed the formation. On the return, over the
Adriatic Sea, two of the aircraft encountered storms on the way back
complete with hail and snow. The 460th field was too foggy for
landing, so the aircraft landed at the 485th field, in Venosa, Italy,
west of Spinazzola, where the crew spent the night. One crewman
noted that the breakfast there was not nearly as good as the 460th's.

A
460th BG B-24 with Massive Tail Damage; Dad with Top Turret Guns

One source provides this recount of the overall 15th Army Air Force
missions that day. In Austria, 80 B-17s and B-24s attack a benzol plant
at Linz, marshalling yard at Innsbruck, and troop concentrations at
Novi
Pazar, Yugoslavia (all primary targets), and make single bomber attacks
on Wolfsburg, Salzburg, Hieflau, the Kapfenberg steel works, Schwaz,
Ybbs, and airfields near Linz, and Passau, and Traunstein, Germany;
fighters escort the Novi Pazar, Yugoslavia raid.

Dad was awarded the Air Medal on this day, the day before his tenth and
last mission.

The
Black PantherProud Insignia of
the
460th Bomb Group

At
the
Start of
the War ...
...
and after 50
Missions
... and
as Nose Art on a B-24

An
interesting aside about the black panther insignia is that Col.
Robert T.
Crowder
put Clifford
Stone, then a Lt., in charge of a 460th Bomb Group competition
for
a group insignia featuring a black panther. The fierce black
panther shown above on the left was the winning entry. The black
panther signifies swift, iron-clawed revenge. The motto of the 460th
Bomb Group was "Seek and Destroy". We will
learn more
of
Cliff Stone in this following mission. By the way, Col. Crowder,
Commanding Officer of the 460th Bomb Group from August 1943 to April
1944, was killed in action when his aircraft crashed after being
attacked and fired upon with machine guns and cannons by an
ME-109 on April 15, 1944 on a mission to Romania.

Left,
the venerable
Old Black Panther as fuselage art. Note
the more standard version at
bottom right of the picture; center, the traditional Black
Panther patch on 460th radioman, Cpl. Sheehan;
right, Cmdr. Robert T. Crowder (left) and Dep. Cmdr. Bertram C.
Harrison (right) in front of a bomber with the
new Black Panther emblem. In addition to the nose art,
other markings were often placed by the
ground crew assigned to the aircraft. Bomb symbols were added to
indicate the aircraft completed a mission; swastikas indicated a downed
German fighter.
Mission
No. 10

November
16, 1944, Thursday. Target: Munich, Germany - Munich West
Marshalling Yards.A
chronology of the
15th
Army
Air Force's overall missions that day indicates, on a macro-level, that this day was a busy one
for the entire 15th Army Air Force. It indicates that "550+ B-17s and B-24s
attack Munich, Germany west marshalling yard and troop concentrations
at
Visegrad, Yugoslavia as well as an alternate target of Innsbruck,
Austria marshalling yard, and scattered targets of
opportunity; 250+ P-51s and P-38s support the attack on Munich; 26
other P-38s strafe transport targets on roads between Sarajevo and Novi
Pazar, Yugoslavia."

Far
above left, a 460th Bomb Group B-24 with "K" markings; far
above right, a 460th Bomb Group B-24 over Nis, Yugoslavia, September
1944; above, left and right, tail sections from two unidentified 460th
B-24s.

The 460th bomb group airmen were part of two of the above 15th Army Air
Force missions - the attacks on Munich and troop concentrations in
Yugoslavia. The bomb group was split into two
separate attack
forces or echelons, named Red Force and Blue Force. There
were a lot of aircraft available, partly
because maintenance crews were able to ready so many of
the aircraft in for repair
during the several previous days when no missions were
flown. Red
Force was assigned the primary mission of bombing the
west marshalling
yards in Munich and all four bomb groups (460th,
464th,
465th, and the 485th) of
the
55th Army Air
Force
wing were represented. In fact, this mission was represented by all
Bomb Wings of the 15th Army Air Force. In total there were 101
B-17s from the 2nd, 97th, and 99th Bomb Groups and 348 B-24s from the
47th, dad's 55th, and the 304th Bomb Wings with most of the groups
using Pathfinders to bomb the target. Aircraft not assigned to
the maximum
strength
Red Force were assigned to Blue Force. Blue Force had the
mission
to bomb troop concentrations in Yugoslavia and three of the four bomb
groups (460th, 464th, and the 465th) were represented on this mission.

Dad and the crew were part of Red Force and they were going to Munich,
deep in the German heartland 543 miles northwest
of Spinazzola.
The marshalling yards in Munich were strategic and often targeted
because much of the fuel and synthetic oil produced in the Balkans
moved through Munich on the way to factories and the war fronts. Munich
was a frequent target and would be bombed 74 times during the course of
the war. Munich was targeted so often by the US and the RAF not
only because it was a target-rich city serving as a railway hub for
southern Germany, as a critical air hub for the war effort, and being
the industrial home for key armament factories such as BMW, Daimler,
and Dornier, but because it was the capital city of Bavaria (Bayern in
German) and the fourth largest city in Germany at the time.
Munich was likely also a desirable target because of the significance
it held for the Nazi regime - Munich was the birthplace and spiritual
center of the Nazi party and many important party buildings were
located there.

The Red Force
mission would entail two
separate attack units. The first attack unit would be
led by Colonel John Price and the second would be led by the
pilot on
dad's ship. The
460th
would be well represented that day with 31 aircraft on Red
Force. If all went well, this would be an eight hour mission based on
the logs of those who returned. Their B-24 Liberator was
equipped differently this time and consequently was
called a Pathfinder or a PFF for Pathfinder Force or a Mickey by some. The
PFF or
Mickey
designation meant their B-24 was equipped
with an H2X radar assembly where the ball turret was usually
located, as shown on this 460th BG aircraft in the foreground of the
formation en route to Oswiecim, Poland in 1944. The operator of the
pathfinder equipment was called a "Mickey Man" and they were in high
demand due to a shortage of trained operators. This is the same
equipment used on the Lone Wolf aircraft discussed in more detail in
the prior mission, although this was not a Lone Wolf mission. The
hemispherical dome
enclosed and shielded a rotating H2X radar dish. In American formations
Pathfinders led the formation to the target and dropped their bombs
first. The British used their Pathfinders in a different way, partly
because they bombed at night. A British Pathfinder would find the
target in advance of the formation and drop a flare or incendiary bombs
to mark the target for the formation which followed some time behind
the Pathfinder. H2X radar,
also known as Bomb Through Overcast or "BTO", was an American
improvement over an earlier version of ground searching radar invented
by the
British.

Navigational
aids were not new. The German-invented and widely used Lorentz
navigation and landing system had been in existence since pre-war days
to assist with directing and landing aircraft when
visibility
was hindered. The Lorentz system used two signals
similar to Morse code. One signal was
a transmission of dots, the other of dashes.If
an aircraft was centered on a
runway on its approach the two signals effectively combined or
overlapped and
resulted in a constant tone letting the pilot know he was on course.
In the early stages of the war the
Germans
further developed this system with the intent of guiding their
bombers to a target. The improved system was called Knickebein.
This system was easily countered or "jammed" by the British by
superimposing another signal over the Knickebein signal. The British
countermeasure was effective and was codenamed "Aspirin".

After
Knickebein the Germans developed an enhanced system called X-gerät
which used four beams or signals, one, a coarse or broad beam,
for
"approach" or direction to enable the bombers to stay on
a general course to the target, and three beams sent from a
single
or multiple ground sites directed across the directional beam.
Graphically, this arrangement is often likened
to the
cross hairs on a telescopic sight.The
directional beam was broad since too narrow a beam would be easily lost
if a bomber veered off couse slightly. However, use of a broad
directional beam introduced error. The
cross-beams would provide signals when the bomber was so many miles or
kilometers from the target, similar to
mile markers for the navigator. The
first two of the cross-beams were considered coarse beams as they
provided rough estimates of distance from targets, while the
last of the three cross-beams was consider a fine beam and
came
when the bomber was exactly a predetermined distance from the target,
say 5 or 15 kilometers. X-gerät
provided
accuracy of 100 yards over a range of 200 miles. True to form, the
British quickly developed a countermeasure codenamed "Bromide".It blocked
the coarse signals effectively and even the tougher to block fine
signals.

Since X-gerät had been
rendered useless, the Germans invented Y-gerät or
Wotan as it was called. Wotan appeared around December 1940
and used a single beam.This
system relied on communication between the aircraft and ground
stations.The bomber
would receive the
signal and then resend or reradiate it back to the ground station.This system allowed the
aircraft to actually
turn control over to the automatic pilot system which would guide the
aircraft
to the target and automatically drop bombs. The British
defeated Y-gerät by receiving and
sending back to the aircraft its own reradiated
signal.

Unfortunately
these systems would not be very useful to the British at
the time due to range limitations.The
British were very interested in developing navigational aids since
they typically flew night missions and did not have the benefit of
geographical landmarks. The
British would require much longer range capabilities to reach the Axis
targets. To this end,

the British
developed a system called "Gee"
which used one master and two slave ground stations to essentially
provide the
aircraft location information using signals or beams.Gee
did a good job getting aircraft to the
general target area, but not to the precise target. It was unable to
provide that level of resolution. Gee
remained useful for about a year until the
Germans discovered and jammed it.Gee
had a range of 450 miles, but its accuracy was limited.

For the
British, next came Oboe which was designed to guide the bombers to the
city, pinpoint the target even at night and with undercast.It was a kind of early transponder
technology and used two ground stations at Norfolk
and Kent.The Norfolk location was codenamed "Cat" and Kent
was "Mouse".Accuracy was 100
yards at 250 miles, which
allowed the British to use the system on targets along the Ruhr. There were other versions of Oboe that were
developed over time to stay ahead of the German jamming capabilities.

Finally,
the British invented a true ground searching radar which was the
earlier version of that on dad's bomber. This early radar
system
was called H2S and used a longer
wavelength than subsequent systems. H2S was a
significant improvement over ground station based navigational systems.H2S had its beginning in existing
air interception equipment design to
locate enemy fighters. Fighters noticed
that when pointed groundward their aircraft intercept devices produced
a decipherable image of the ground.The
system was refined and
dubbed H2S, an early ground search radar system.
The aircraft dad was on for this mission was equipped with the improved
version of H2S. The US
version was called H2X and

used
a shorter wavelength
which provided much greater penetration and resolution and allowed
better
discernment of the target. While the Germans did have radar
detection capability, it is believed that the shorter wavelengths
generated by H2X were never detected. This process of one side
developing a technology followed closely by the enemy's development of
a counter-technology was called the "Battle of the Beams".

Because
the
H2X radar equipment displaced the bottom or ball turret on dad's bomber
this day it was equipped with two fewer machine
guns, only
eight .50 caliber machine guns instead of ten, otherwise it was
basically the
same. Interestingly, while their aircraft was a
460th Bomb
Group bomber,
it was not one of their own 763rd Bomb Squad aircraft, but one from the
762nd
Bomb Squad. Their own plane from the 763rd Bomb Squad
did not pass a pre-flight inspection and was grounded. They
were flying
aircraft
no. 42-52011, which bore a white letter "L" on its side. The
plane was therefore called "White L for Love" or just "White L".
Reports from that day refer to it simply as "L". Group
historian Sparky Bohnstedt informed me that the new plane was not given
a thorough pre-flight check because things were rushed since changing
planes and moving all the gear and equipment put the crew
behind
schedule. Bob
Seidel indicated
that the new aircraft had never been properly "slow-timed", the engines
had not been broken in slowly and had not had its power settings
optimized for various altitudes.

The
official Missing
Air Crew Report varies slightly regarding crew duty
assignments as
compared to Bills's memoir. Bills indicates
the
pilot
of the White L was Captain
Clifford William "Cliff" Stone ("Stoney" to his war buddies) who was
also given the honor of leading
the Red Force's second attack
unit because it would be his last of his 50 required
missions. Other
officers, in addition to Captain Stone were:
original crew member 1st Lt. Samuel Marlin Hamilton, usually pilot,
now copilot on this mission (aside, Sam had been promoted to
1st Lt. just one week prior, on November 7th); 1st Lt.
Robert David Kuhne, bombardier; 1st Lt. Arthur Godar, navigator; and
1st Lt.
Morris
"Maury" Caust (whom we learned a little bit about above on dad's fifth
mission) and 1st Lt. John Marshall Alcorn, both radar
navigators. The Missing Air Crew Report lists Caust and Alcorn as
navigators, Kuhne as radar navigator, and Godar as bombardier. I am
inclined to believe the report is correct because I have corresponded
with one of Robert Kuhne's sons who indicates his dad was a navigator.
Robert Kuhne's obituary indicates he was a navigator as well. Aircraft
equipped with radar apparatus typically did have a navigator to
operate and monitor the equipment and another traditional navigator to
aid the pilot in course direction and adjustments. Kuhne's
Caterpillar Club application essay provided to me by his grandson,
Christopher Howell, indicates he was the "Radar Observer Bombardier".
As
for the enlisted men, they were all original crew members: Sgt. Otto
Ernest “Tex” Mattiza;
Sgt. John Ewing Bills, Jr.; Sgt. Robert Sherman "Bob" Seidel; Staff
Sgt. Harold Franklin
"Hal"
Adams; and
my dad, Staff Sgt. Richard Lee "Dick" Weber. Bob Seidel was not
originally
scheduled for this flight, but he had volunteered and was allowed to go
as an extra crew member. He was eager to get missions under
his
belt. Just days earlier this mission would have earned the
crew
two points since it was a tough
one to Munich, but the rules had changed on November 9th. The required
mission count for a complete tour of duty was reduced from 50 back to
35, but tough missions would no longer count double. Crews
that had racked up a lot of missions were provided a week of rest and
relaxation, or "R&R", on the Isle of Capri. At one point the
required
mission count for the R&R trip was 25, or halfway through the
then
current full mission count. Some pilots and copilots were provide de
facto combat breaks by serving as a shuttle service for embarking and
disembarking crews. All crews had their eye on a week at Capri.

Dana
Satterfield
was not
on this mission because his ball turret was occupied by the radar
raydome
equipment.
Original crew members John Murphy and Joe Rudolph were not on
the crew either. Joe was not needed because Sam was flying copilot
(Joe's usual role) and John
because Arthur Godar was serving as bombardier, perhaps because of the
Mickey apparatus. John Bills
indicates in his memoirs that Joe would go on to become a pilot and
finish all of his
missions by the end of the war; he was one of the lucky ones. I was able
to contact John's daughter, Sandra Murphy Conley, who informed me that
John did fly the mission that day as part of another crew and was a
lead or deputy lead bombardier, perhaps of another wave or formation box. Like Joe, John went on to finish his mission as well. As
previously
noted,
one of the original crew officers, Emmett Warren "Bo" Barger, Jr. had
died on his
November 11th mission as part of another crew. There
were a total of 11 men on this crew (six officers and five enlisted
men), along with ten 500 lb.
bombs, and the newly installed radar equipment. Sam Hamilton indicated
in a taped interview the bomb load consisted of ten 1,000 lb. bombs.
The typical
Liberator crew carried only ten men and no radar
equipment.

The White L was a brand new B-24-J15 model manufactured by the Ford
Motor Co. at the expansive 80-acre Willow Run B-24 bomber plant in
Michigan. Willow Run was constructed beginning in April 1941 when
the country knew war was in its future. Willow Run, at its peak,
employed 42,000 employees who built 8,685 bombers from 1,255,000
separate parts per bomber, and produced at peak rate one bomber every
55 minutes. All the experts said it couldn't be done, that
producing a bomber in several hours, let alone a bomber an hour as Ford
promised, was impossible, but Henry and his son Edsel proved them wrong.

B-24
designs changed over the course of the war to accommodate changes
needs, improve performance and protection, and to incorporate rapidly
changing technology. B-24s were referred to by a letter or letter
and number combination appended to the B-24 designation, in this case
"J15". The "J" series cost around $300,000 and was the most
current variant of the heavy bomber at that time and had some
improvements over previous versions, such as having been equipped with
the Emerson electric rotating nose turret (designed to provide more
responsive head-on frontal attack protection than the earlier hydraulic
turret) and some other enhancements. Some B-24Js built at
factories other than Willow Run did not receive the electric turret due
to a supply shortage and were equipped with hydraulic turrets of
earlier models. Prior to the design of early "C" variants and
subsequent "D" variants, B-24s had neither hydraulic nor electric nose
turrets but rather glazed domes that were reminiscent of multi-paned
garden hot houses with fixed machine gun mounts. The "C" variant
was also the first variant to feature the distinguishing oval engine
nacelle so closely associated with the B-24. Oval nacelles were a
result of a design change resulting from the addition of turbochargers
to improve performance at high altitude. All subsequent models
featured oval nacelles which, along with the dual rudders, were the
B-24's distinctive trademarks.

The
White L was so new
and factory-fresh it had never even been on a combat mission yet.
There has been some speculation regarding the color of the White L as
aircraft of the time could be provided in either what was referred to
as "natural metal" (i.e., shiny aluminum) or painted olive drab.
Of course aircraft could also be painted by crew in-theater. When
I began this research I assumed that the White L was natural metal
given the fact that it was newly manufactured and assigned relatively
late in the war, but
have become convinced it was likely olive drab. Robert Kuhne's
Caterpillar Club essay indicates the aircraft had been
freshly painted as a "Lone Wolf", an aircraft that could be sent out on
single aircraft missions. Further, an aircraft inventory list
based on Individual Aircraft Record Card (IARC) data I have
included as an appendix and update from time-to-time does indicate the
White L was olive drab. The single White L for Love crash
site picture I have is inconclusive as to color and I cannot tell
if the aircraft had been painted or
not. Pieces of the aircraft that have been provided to me are
also inconclusive as some parts are painted and some are not. In
December of 1943 the US War Department made
the decision to cease having most of the US aircraft painted, except
for those specialty aircraft to be used for night mission and troop
transport. The rationale was that the olive drab or camouflage
paint schemes added little to safety or stealth especially due to the
altitudes the aircraft normally flew over enemy territory and
eliminating
painting would save cost, production time, and per some sources
potentially improve
performance somewhat by reducing weight. For example, the olive
drab paint job on a B-17 added about 300 lbs to the aircraft. Of
course aircraft would still bear US markings, and customary group and
squadron designations, along with aircraft number.

One crew member
remembered that the White L even smelled new and that he liked that
smell. So, for this mission there was a crack crew that for the most
part had worked
together before, a new plane, and the best high tech gadgetry available
at the time, the Pathfinder radar equipment, that would even allow
navigation and bombing through overcast. Some of the crew felt that
having a battle-seasoned pilot like Captain Cliff Stone with 49
missions under his belt was almost a good luck charm. This had
all the makings for a good mission even if it were to fortified Munich,
deep within Germany.

Left,
a
B-24 Equipped as a Pathfinder. Note
the
Raydome Protruding the Underside.
Right, 460th B-24, "Pretty Baby", Showing Early Tail Markings
over
Capri. Below Left, B-24 S/N 42-52380 Being Searched
by
Germans after a Crash on April 13, 1944; Below Right, an Early 460th
Aircraft.

Bombs
were loaded and secured in their racks, the hurried pre-flight
inspection was completed by each crew member, and final checks were
performed. Clifford Stone and Sam Hamilton were busy performing
their checks and start-up procedures. I can picture both of them in
their crusher caps minding the details of readying a heavy bomber for
flight. Crusher caps were the officers' billed caps that had been
altered by removing the wire that held the cap in shape. They did
this so that the headsets they wore would fit better. The
practice also had the effect to distinguish them from regular army, the
"ground pounders" as they were referred to by the Army Air Force.
It was a popular look and eventually officers and enlisted men
alike, even those who had never flown a combat mission, could be seen
sporting a crusher. A well-worn crusher cap was called a "fifty
mission crusher", and no doubt Clifford's had the legitimate look and
feel of a true fifty mission crusher. The men waited for the start
engine and takeoff signals.
Once received, the White L taxied to and then accelerated down the
runway and began its lumbering climb into the sky. All the aircraft on
the mission formed on the White L's lead and began the long flight
toward Germany and enemy skies. After the formation
had tightened-up, Captain Stone informed the crew and the
other
aircraft pilots that he was going to drop out of formation to lighten
the load by releasing one of the bombs. Sam Hamilton indicated in a
taped interview many years later that he dropped two bombs.
Robert
Kuhne's Caterpillar Club essay indicates two bombs were dropped over
the Adriatic Sea. Clifford Stone also indicates in his September 2008
video-taped oral history interview with the Obamakansasheritage.org
that two bombs were dropped. Captain Stone
felt the radar
equipment, along with the full complement of bombs, and the extra crew
member, made the plane
sluggish. Some reports indicate the plane was dodging from
side-to-side and that the captain had to struggle to maintain it, so
maybe
that prompted ridding the aircraft of a bomb. Generally
speaking,
the B-24 was noted
as a tough craft to fly, especially when compared to the B-17 Flying
Fortress, but this sort of lurching behavior was not
normal. There
was almost a
collision
with another plane as the White L rejoined the formation;
whose
fault that was no one will ever know for sure. Sam Hamilton indicated
in a taped interview many years later that Captain Stone exited and
re-entered the formation correctly and that the near miss was the fault
of the No. 3 aircraft, flying off the White L's left wing. Bob Seidel
indicated
he thought the plane was flying a little better
after it dropped one of its bombs, but that the power settings were
still too high and the aircraft was burning fuel fast. He indicates
that the airspeed, and consequently the airspeed of the entire
formation, was greater than normal. He said he kept saying "I don't
know what Stone is trying to do". The ship proceeded up the Adriatic
Sea and skirted Venice.

Munich,
or München in German, was extremely heavily defended at this point
in
the war,
anti-aircraft batteries having been brought in from outlying areas to
concentrate and strengthen its defenses. Pulling a mission to Munich was far from the milk run everyone wanted.

As
the bomber formation approached the Munich area the crew readied
themselves for the bomb run. Just as the crew prepared for
bombing, so did the German populace far below and there was great
activity throughout the area on the ground even before the bombers
could be heard or seen. By this point in the war, bombing had
become commonplace for the German citizen. Even at the very start
of the war, just after Germany invaded Poland and Britain entered the
war days later, German citizens had been provided a protocol and
directions for air raid response. Each household had been
provided gas masks for possible chemical attack and hand-powered water
pumps for fire control. They had already been provided
instructions to extinguish lights at nighttime and were taught how to
prepare a basement room as a makeshift bomb shelter. They were
instructed to stack sandbags around basement windows as further
fortification of the home. Wardens were organized to aid people
during air raids and to ensure the general population made it to
designated air raid shelters in an orderly fashion as possible. On that
mid-November day in Munich the initial air raid sirens sounded the
Voralarm, the pre-warning blasts that consisted of three long tones
followed by a brief silence and then repeated, when the bombers were
detected in the territory. This pre-warning siren alerted the
people to get ready to make their way to shelter. More cautious
people headed for the shelters when this pre-alarm sounded. The
very cautious individuals never ventured far from the shelters.
Some citizens found it preferable to sleep in the shelters at
night. In Munich that day, no doubt there was significant
activity in the streets as the Voralarm sounded due to the frequent
bombing of the important and target-rich city of Munich. While
some Munich residents were already hunkered in the shelters, the second
alarm sounded when the bombers were minutes away from Munich.
This second alarm was taken seriously by all the townspeople and those
who had not already found shelter did so then. Only the foolhardy
took no response. The second alarm was a continuous wail that
lasted for around a minute. The townspeople would remain in the
shelters until they first heard the Vorentwarnung indicating the
immediate threat was over. The Vorentwarnung was the same repeating
three blasts used for the pre-warning. Some braver souls
made their way out at that time; others waited for the end of air raid
signal, the Entwarnung, which was a sustained uniform tone.
Air raids warnings could also be broadcast over a dedicated radio
frequency to reach more distant citizens at risk. At some points
in the war three alarms sounded - one preliminary alarm, one "to
shelters" alarm, and one "Hoechstalarm" indicating the attack
imminent. Some sources indicate that late in the war only one
alarm was sounded which served as a signal to find shelter.

Meanwhile
as a result of the increasingly dense ground-based air defenses due to
a shrinking German territory, at almost four miles over Munich, the
White L encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire en route to the
target. The number four engine had either been hit or had
developed
other mechanical problems, but
even so Captain Stone with the assistance of the Pathfinder radar
navigators Maury Caust and Robert Kuhne was able to lead the formation
to the IP, the
initial point or start of the bomb run. The original plan had
been
to attack the marshalling yard from the south, but Captain Stone opted
to veer around Munich and come in from a more northwestern direction.
He did this for two reasons - to take advantage of tail winds and to
try to avoid an area of especially intense anti-aircraft fire. Captain Stone
turned
the
control of the White L over to Bombardier Godar who took control of the
aircraft using the highly secret Norden M-9 bombsight linked to the
Sperry C-1 autopilot. He used the sight
and the data provided to him by the Pathfinder navigator to make minute
adjustments to the course of the aircraft and dialed the
sight to the calculated aim point to center the bomb drop
on the
marshalling yard. The picture here is of a prior bombing of the marshalling yard on October 4, 1944 by the 461st Bomb Group. At 1:02 PM
from an
altitude of 27,200 feet with an outside temperature of minus 40 degrees
Fahrenheit, the
White L dropped its bombs on target, attacking Munich from the
north-northwest. Since
the White L and the Captain Stone crew were
leading this attack unit, when Bombardier Godar toggled the White L's
bomb drop
the rest of the formation toggled on their drop. All bombs in the
formation were away!
Tons of high explosives and incendiaries rained down on Munich. Bombardier Godar turned control back to Captain Stone,
who wheeled
away, turning the formation toward home. Interestingly, Sam Hamilton
indicated in a taped interview done by former crewmate John Bills that
he (Sam) released the bombs on his own decision after the ship pulled
out of its first dive, still three minutes from the target. He
indicated all the other aircraft dropped immediately after he did.
Robert Kuhne's Caterpillar Club essay supports the early release of the
bombs after the aircraft had begun the bomb run. A report of the
mission indicates that the mission caused damage to repair shops,
locomotive sheds, tracks, and rolling stock.

Flak
was
moderate and below the formation at that time. The plane had
been
sort of jumping
from
side-to-side and lurched left when the bombs were dropped. The
number four engine was in serious shape (some crew
members
recall
the
engine being hit, some thought it was mechanical in nature), and
then the
number three engine was hit and burst into flames.
Co-pilot Hamilton would have tried to kill the engine fire by
activating the fire extinguisher valves to his right, sending the
extinguishing agent directly to the engine nacelles through a network
of delicate tubing that ultimately snaked its way to the cylinder heads.
John Bills indicated that the number four engine was running away,
which meant that it was running at full power and
out-of-control. My father’s writings on this event
indicates
that
after the
number three
engine was knocked out, the number two engine was
“feathered”, but this may not be accurate when
compared to the official Missing Air Crew Report No.
9940.
Feathering was a procedure which entailed rotating the
propeller
blades so that the narrow profile of the blades faced into the wind to
reduce drag and conserve altitude. Feathering an engine's
propellers was achieved by activating one of four switches above the
main instrument console above the clock, remote indicating
compass, and the magnetic compass. Inadvertently activating a
feathering switch could be catastrophic and consequently the four
switches were located behind a protective bar or guard that
had to
be manually lifted to access the switches.

Bob Seidel did indicate, like dad did, that the plane was running on
only the two outboard engines, the number one and number four, and that
the two inboard engines, numbers two and three, were out. Sam Hamilton
indicated in a taped interview that the No. 3 and No. 4 engines (right
side) were
out, and the No. 2 was running away. Robert Kuhne indicated that the
two port (right side) engines were out - one feathered due to
mechanical problems over the Alps and the other hit. The hit engine was
windmilling, unable to be feathered because the hydraulics had been hit
as well. Clifford Stone was video interviewed in September 2008
as part of an oral history project by the Obamakansasheritage.org
organization. In that interview Clifford indicates that three
engines were out by the time the ship was abandoned.

It just shows there was confusion and a lot of speculation going on
at the time. One crew member, Bob Seidel who was the nose gunner,
recalled the heavy flak and shrapnel they were taking and how it
bounced around the inside of the plane or sprayed against the side of
the ship. Some old veterans likened the sound of shrapnel hitting
their bomber to someone throwing handfuls of gravel at a metal
trashcan. Shortly after their plane had taken a hit that knocked
out an engine Otto Mattiza recalled seeing a flak burst to the right
side of their aircraft which took out another B-24. That aircraft
rolled over on its back, cut across the front of their aircraft and
began its long descent downward, nose first. Bob Seidel saw that too.
He remembered looking at the waist gunners on that doomed plane as it
went by. Falling aircraft were difficult to escape from and once an
aircraft began to spin, it was nearly impossible to bail out.

Their
damaged plane began to drop out of formation, making
it extremely vulnerable to enemy fighter attack. Two American fighters
escorted them for a while, radioing
back their tail numbers and location and generally keeping the enemy
fighters at bay. Bob Seidel indicates in his 1999 interview that the
now famous Tuskegee 332nd Fighter Group, or Red Tails, flying out of
Ramitelli, Italy had at
times escorted their group, so maybe those airmen were there for dad's
crew on this mission. My research indicates that the 332nd did fly this
mission and provide escort cover, but it appears they were assigned to
cover another group. The mission record for the Tuskegee Red Tails
confirms that the group did escort mission bombers that day. A
mission summary notes that the Tuskegee fighters were charged with
aiding in penetration, target cover, and withdrawal. It also
notes that the Tuskegee fighter group reported that many ME-109s were
encountered and that the group scored two victories in the aerial
combat that ensued.

Sam
Hamilton indicated that he felt the White L "sink". He indicated that
the normal speed was 180 to 190 miles per hour, but that the
speed had dropped to 145 to 150 miles per hour. He
said at that time the aircraft had entered into a side slip with
its left wing down. He gave it full forward stick with right
rudder. The White
L entered into its first dive and rapidly dropped from around 28,000
feet to about 19,000 feet, almost a two mile dive before it could pull
out. Sam Hamilton knew he had never flown so fast and could not
understand how the ship could take those stresses and hold together. Bob Seidel
indicates
that it was
all that Captain Stone and Lt. Hamilton could do to pull out. Crew
members were pinned against walls and seats as their aircraft
accelerated downward under the force of gravity and the thrust of the
two remaining engines. Captain Stone told Lt. Hamilton to "get on the
controls", knowing he would need help to pull out. Bob
indicates it took Hamilton and Stone "both, with their feet on
the rudder pedals, and they pulled back on the steering yoke -- it
took both of them to pull it back -- before it finally took" on the
second attempt.
Control surfaces such as the rudder, aileron, elevators, and tabs could
be controlled by both the pilot and co-pilot separately, but these
control systems were not truly independent. Gears, pulleys, and
cables that drove the surfaces were themselves actuated by a common
drive shaft that connected the pilot's and co-pilot's pedals and
yoke. Having Hamilton aid Stone directly added force necessary
overcome the forces caused by the extreme speed and angle of the
aircraft. The additional force was necessary to
move the flight surfaces in order to come out of the dive. During
the dive and
the intense struggle to regain control, the crew in the back would have
been initially tossed around and then pinned to a wall or bulkhead of
the bomber due to the G-forces experienced in the powered dive.

The
White
L was out
of formation and was obviously
struggling to keep up by this time. Bob Seidel indicates they were
continuing to lose altitude
at about 500 feet per minute. Robert Kuhne indicated that the right
wing with the two lost engines was "flapping" and the side of the
aircraft was "shaping madly" and causing the aircraft to bounce so much
his radar set was actually jumping around. By "shaping" Kuhne meant
that he could see the side of the aircraft actually cyclically
deforming to the point where the aircraft structure and siding could
either crumple or fail due to fatigue. The aircraft
formation
that had been following the White
L
saw the dire condition of their lead and began to scatter. It was about
at this time that the captain issued the
order to salvo equipment. The White
L's
nose wheel door opened and the crew began to jettison all loose
equipment. The highly secret Norden bombsight would have
been
destroyed and pitched at this time as well. Bob Seidel was
ordered to leave the nose and help
the crew unbolt and drop the pathfinder H2X raydome, reportedly around
2,000 pounds, to further
lighten the load. In a non-PFF aircraft, the ball turret, instead of
the raydome, would have been unbolted and dropped as excess weight. The
following picture is of an actual ball turret dropping into the sea
from a B-17 Flying Fortress.

Captain Stone asked his navigator for a course to
Vienna and the Russian lines. Flying
on
the White L's
left wing was Lt. Edward Shemanski in Yellow D. You may
recall
that Lt. Shemanski was the copilot on the Galarneau crew during the
October
20th mid-air collision. Shemanski tried to
contact Captain Stone on a VH frequency to no avail. Shortly
afterwards, somewhere between Munich and Salzburg, the White L went
into
a second dive and eventually leveled out at about 15,000 feet (Bob
Seidel indicates he thought the plane pulled out of the dive around
14,000 feet), just a few thousand feet above the undercast, the
altitude at which the aircraft would penetrate the clouds from above
and become visible to the German anti-aircraft batteries below; soon
there would be no protective cloud cover and anti-aircraft cannon
sighting would be by visual means. Around this time Captain
Stone sent out a call. His actual words as recalled by Shemanski and
recorded in the missing air crew report were "Any ship in the Yellow
Squadron, this is White L, please acknowledge". Lt. Shemanski
acknowledged the call, identifying his aircraft as Yellow D now on
Stone's left wing, and gave Stone the "Go ahead". Captain Stone said "I
have two engines out, can't hold altitude and am going down, but want
to get as far as possible". Yellow D took the lead. Lt. Shemanski had
one of his crew check the position of White L. White L was at about
13,000 feet, entering the clouds, and making a right turn. Lt.
Shemanski and his crew thought White L was probably making a run for
Switzerland. Switzerland was only about 130 miles away from
Munich on a magnetic heading about 260 degrees. If the bomber
could limp its way to neutral Switzerland, the crew could ride out the
remainder of the war there, no longer classified as
combatants, still interned, but almost certainly treated more kindly
than at an enemy prisoner of war camp. Switzerland made a distinction
between Allied soldier who walked across the border for sanctuary and
those who came from the skies. Airmen were considered "internees" and
treated as prisoners subject to the rules of war with officers going to
nicer internment area like hotels and lodges and enlisted men going to
traditional prison camps. Other Allied and Axis soldiers were
considered "evadees". Evadees generally were not imprisoned and were
free men among the Swiss populace in accordance with old laws dating
back to the middle ages. Although considered neutral,
Switzerland had been bombed by the Allied forces, only perhaps by
mistake, and was known to have shot down or caused forced landings of
both Axis and Allied aircraft. Allied aircraft also shot down Swiss
fighters. Switzerland had a strong Nazi influence and continued to
manufacture war products for the Germans during the war years. Although
many
internment camps were in places like former ski lodges, some were
severe work or punishment camps, such as Wauwilermoos, typically
reserved for prisoners who had
previously attempted escaped from more lenient camps. Prisoners in such
places were often worked to death performing hard labor such as hauling
stone from quarries. Beatings, rape, and other abuses of Allied
soldiers were ignored by the Swiss guards and the Captain in charge of
the prison, while the German prisoners were protected. Wauwilermoos was
run by a sadistic Swiss pro-Nazi, some claim actual Nazi, Captain André
Henri Béguin. After the war, on February 20, 1946, Béguin was charged
with thirteen violations of Swiss military penal code by the Swiss
government and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. His
charges included suppression of a prisoner's complaint.

At
one
point in the war, the US advised Switzerland to cease its mistreatment
of US airmen or US bombers might begin to experience "navigation
errors"
resulting in bombings in Switzerland. Overshooting Switzerland
could
put the White L crew in occupied France where the best hope would be to be picked
up by the French resistance fighters, the Maquis, and perhaps be helped
back to Allied-controlled territory. The missing air crew
report indicates that the last
recorded coordinates for the White L were 47 degrees 30 minutes North,
13 degrees 00
minutes East at its final sighting at 1:35 PM.

Remarkable photographs taken on dad's final Munich West
Marshalling Yard Mission, November 16, 1944 - two photos of a B-24
shot down by anti-aircraft fire. The Aircraft is identified as a
465th Bomb Group bomber from dad's 55th Bomb Wing.
At some point after the White L began lagging and dropping out of
what was left of any sort of formation,
they were attacked by at
least two waves of German fighter planes, the single engine ME-109s and
the twin engine JU-88s, and
fought them off,
but by that time their plane was crippled, helpless, and
doomed. Bob Seidel indicated one wing was on fire probably due to oil
or
hydraulic fluid, not fuel. In order to minimize altitude loss as well
as the rate of loss,
equipment and
personal gear had been
jettisoned. Crew members had even thrown out their flak
jackets,
guns,
and ammunition
in
their desperate attempt to stay airborne. Captain Stone and
Lt.
Hamilton
began considering
where to ditch the aircraft and Captain Stone again asked his navigator
for a course, this time to Switzerland. In his 2008 video-taped
interview, Clifford Stone indicated that his first preference would
have been to make it to Yugoslavia because he thought that would "get
him home" more quickly due to the active and established resistance organizations. As it
turned out, that conversation was moot because they had dropped too low
and
were at risk
of running into the mountainous area around Berchtesgaden,
Hitler’s summer
retreat. Copilot Hamilton saw the mountains ahead and some small lakes
he called tarns and knew that if they were to bail, it had better be
soon. He told Captain Stone that now would be the time to get
out. Captain Stone or Copilot Hamilton reached over to the
IFF
(Identification Friend or Foe) Radio Destroyer Switch located high on
the console in front of and on the left side of the copilot's position
and hit the two buttons to detonate small charges, called
squibs, destroying the radio so the technology would not fall
into
German hands. The internal communication system, called
the
interphone,
had
been knocked out shortly after the crew had jettisoned
equipment
and gear (Kuhne's Caterpillar essay indicates the interphone went
out much earlier, about 15 minutes after takeoff), but the bail
out alert
had already
been passed along.
The crew would have donned their parachutes long before this
point. Pilot Stone and Co-pilot Hamilton would have already been
attached from the start of the mission to their seat-style parachutes
that also served as the cushions in their steel chair frames and the
rest of the crew would have attached their chest parachutes to their
harnesses when things even began to look dire. Some ball turret
gunners, especially the very small framed ones, preferred the backpack
parachutes, but most used the chest parachutes most of the crew
used. Unlike the rest of the crew, ball turret gunners did not
have their parachutes readily accessible while they were in the ball
turret as there simply was not enough room. Instead they kept
them stored near the retracted ball turret so that they could attach
the parachute immediately after exiting the turret. The bottom
hatch was jettisoned
in
preparation of bailing out, but the bell signaling the bail out had not
sounded. Bob Seidel was held back from jumping immediately
because
he
did
not realize the jump bell had not sounded. Sam Hamilton recalled the
altitude was around 7,500 feet when the bail out order was given.
Robert
Kuhne recalled that Captain Stone said something to the effect of
"Well, this is it. Let's go boys".

They
were over Austria by this time. Austria had been annexed into Germany
on March 12, 1938 through a process called Anschluss. Austria existed
as a federal state of Germany until the end of World War II, when the
Allied powers declared the Anschluss void, freed the former Chancellor
Kurt Schuschnigg from prison, and reestablished Austria once again as a
proud
and independent nation. Schuschnigg had been imprisoned on
trumped
up charges, but in reality it was for his opposition to the German
takeover. But on that cold November day, Germany or
Austria, take over by force or by bloodless Anschluss, for the crew in
the doomed bomber descending against its will it was all the
same
- enemy territory and far too far from home.

The crew in the back certainly never heard Captain Stone's words to his
officers, but waited for the
bell instead. Once Captain Stone actuated the button on the center console near his right knee to sound the bail out bell,
Bob Seidel was first
in the rear to go out, then Tex Mattiza, and then John
Bills. This was somewhere near the small town of
Lamprechtshausen, Austria. John Bills
recounted in his wartime memoirs that his son, John Bills III, shared
with me
that my father was the last to jump, having maneuvered through the bomb
bay to the cockpit at the
last
moment to see if any of the pilots had remained in hopes of getting the
plane
home or to Switzerland. Dad’s writings confirm this as
well, as does Sam Hamilton's taped interview. John Bills
indicates that had dad
stayed on board for just another minute longer, he would have crashed
into the
mountains north of Salzburg.

The
Often Encountered
Junker JU-88The
Deadly
Messerschmitt ME-109

Meanwhile,
on the ground, German
military personnel, paramilitary groups, and civilians had seen the
faltering bomber flying
low over
Lamprechtshausen
(translated German
records indicate at a height of only 800 meters) and had watched as the
parachutes blossomed. German records indicate that notification was
sent to neighboring police
posts, SA-guards, home guards, and "other male population".
Two
search parties were immediately formed with the smaller party directed
to the area of Wildermann and the larger party to that of
Fuerth-Weitmoos. The search for the fallen American airmen
began. German
records
indicate that
"the swamp and
forest were roamed all over in a broad
line" and that parachutes were soon discovered.
Copilot Sam Hamilton was the second to last off the doomed aircraft.
He had looked at the instrument panel just before he jumped and saw the
altitude read only about 1,500 feet. After saluting farewell to the
sole crewman left onboard, he jumped through the bomb bay. He got
tangled in his cords on the way down and was upside down for a while,
but was able to free himself. He had strapped on a lot of gear and
while he was trying to get free from his parachute cords, the gear
swung around and hit him hard in the face causing him to see stars. He
landed hard on his heels, fell backwards on his rear, and banged his
head and needed time for his head to clear. He had landed near
some
spruce trees in the midst of several startled deer and hid under one of the trees after seeing some
movement. It turns out the movement was John Bills. The two
hid
together, were passed by three times by the search patrol and a man
pushing his way through the snow on a bicycle. They were soon captured.
Later, when Sam saw dad he asked dad why he had not jumped earlier. Sam
said dad's response was that dad figured if the plane was going back to
Italy, he was going with it.

Sam tells an amusing anecdote about the jump. He said that he had stood
up in preparation of jumping sometime prior to when he finally did jump
and that as he stood he bumped one of the other officers and caused a
domino effect causing (probably) Godar to be pushed out the bomb bay.
Others, seeing Godar jump, followed him out! Sam sat back down and
worked the controls for a time longer.

Captain Clifford Stone had to work his chute to avoid power
lines
and damaged
his ankle upon hitting the
ground. He says in his 2008 video-taped interview that he bailed out
around 1,500 feet and that on landing he hurt his ankle but that
fortunately he did not fracture it. He
tried to crawl into the woods but couldn’t
get away. He was captured and had tense
moments when the Germans thought the case he wore on his belt for his
glasses
was some sort of holster. He was administered first aid by some of the
other crew members when they were brought together at a farmhouse.

Lt. John M. Alcorn and radar navigator Lt. Morris "Maury" Caust
both bailed out over the small village of Innerfürt and hit
the
ground safely, but in different locations near Lamprechtshausen,
Austria, about 3.5 kilometers south of Innerfürt. Innerfürt appears on
many records of this event as "Innerfurth", and should not be confused
with Innerfurth in upper Austria, about 135 miles to the
east. Shortly after they jumped, a young Austrian girl watched
as
one of the airmen descended to earth. The young girl sought out an
adult to tell what she had seen. She found Josef Hangöbl
(Hangobl
in English) and told him that a flyer had parachuted from a plane in
the neighborhood of Innerfürt. Josef was farmer, not a German
soldier, but he was an admitted Nazi and a member of the local civilian
defense group called the Gauwehrmannschaft (Gau). As members
of
the Gau he and many of his friends and neighbors were responsible for
organizing search parties for downed airmen when
necessary. This
group, referred to as the District Defense Group, was a paramilitary
organization, but wore neither uniforms nor insignias. They did
have standing orders to capture enemy fliers and hand them
over to the police. Important
to note is that Josef's documented involvement in this known
paramilitary organization would have some effect on his standing in
military legal proceedings that took place after the war ended and likely made a
significant difference in the way Josef spent the remainder of
his
life. That distinction is that his involvement in the Gau classified him as a "lawful
belligerent".

After
talking with the girl, Josef grabbed
his hunting rifle and took off by foot in the direction indicated by
the girl. Josef soon saw
the downed airman on the ground, standing, but
still attached to his parachute near the farmhouse of Peter
Niederreiter. It was Lt. Morris Caust. John
Alcorn with whom Morris had jumped landed elsewhere and was captured.
Josef indicated that from a distance
of about 70 meters he called to the airman five times in German "Halt!
Hände hoch!" telling
him to raise his hands or, literally, "Stop! Hands high!". Josef
indicated that the airman did not raise
his hands but moved his hands to his chest (in one account Josef
indicates
that he thought that Lt. Caust was going to put his hands into his
jacket and in another statement Josef indicated that Lt. Caust put his
hands in his pockets). Fearing that the American soldier, whom Josef
referred to as a "pilot", was going to produce a gun, Josef fired his
rifle. He indicated that Lt. Caust turned away from him and began to
run. Josef fired a second shot and Lt. Caust fell face forward onto the
ground and "squirmed around" as Josef was to say later. Josef said he
feared
that Lt. Caust was going to
get into a position to shoot him, so he decided to leave in order to
seek help both to capture and aid Lt. Caust. Josef confessed that at no
time did he actually see Lt. Caust produce a weapon.

Josef said he
was going to seek the aid of a nearby
farmer Niedermuller,
but that when he saw Niedermuller he was busy helping to work
in one of Niederreiter's fields so
Josef decided not to bother him. Josef was seen walking away from the
area in a direction which the distance to the nearest house would have
been about two kilometers. Josef said he was later called by another
searcher in the forest to help locate other downed airmen and went off
to aid in that search.

After
Niedermuller and some other farmers
had finished their field work, they had gone to Niedermuller's house to
eat.
While in the house, they heard someone calling "Help me!" in English.
Niedermuller told one of his fellow farmers, Spitzhauer, "That's an
Englishman calling, let's go and look". They quickly found Lt. Caust
and approached to within 20 meters of him. Caust was on the ground, and
Niedermuller told him in English to raise his hands. Lt. Caust
indicated he was
wounded and could not raise his hands, but he made an effort and did
raise his right hand a little. Niedermuller and Spitzhauer approached
Lt. Caust and saw he was sprawled on his parachute and that he was out
of his harness. They searched him and found no gun on him and none in
the area. They carried him on his parachute to Niedermuller's house,
only about 70 or 80 meters away. Niedermuller cut Lt. Caust's left
sleeve, exposed his arm, and extracted a bullet from his left shoulder.
The bullet had passed through his left arm below the elbow and lodged
near his left shoulder. They bandaged that wound and another on his
right upper leg at the hip. Lt. Caust said he had pains in his abdomen
and chest and Niedermuller bandaged a wound in that area and on Lt.
Caust's back. Niedermuller sent for Dr. Huber in Lamprechtshausen,
about two miles away.

At about 3:30 PM that afternoon,
three more American airmen were brought to the farmhouse. They were Lt.
John Marshall Alcorn and two enlisted men from dad's aircraft,
all
of
whom had bailed out along with Lt. Caust around the same time. Lt.
Alcorn entered the house and spoke to Lt. Caust asking him if he had
been shot on the ground or in the air. Lt. Caust responded he had been
shot on the ground while taking off his parachute. Alcorn asked if
Caust could describe who had shot him. Caust indicated he did not know.
Josef Hangöbl was also there at the Niedermuller farmhouse along
with
around 20 to 30 others, all of whom who had gathered due to the local
excitement and to see the American fliers. Some were part of search
parties. Josef
said,
"Yes, I shot him. He was running away." Tex
Mattiza gave Caust morphine to help with the pain. A Casualty
Interrogation Report for the Adjutant General's Office dated
November 8, 1945 by 1st Lt. Burt D. Bream adds a new
element. Bream had been a prisoner at Stalag Luft 1 along with many of
the White L crew members. Coincidentally, he was also a New Yorker like
Morris Caust. 2nd Lt. Bream a navigator with the 8th Army
Airforce, 398th BG, 601st BS was downed on September 8, 1944 in his
B-17 "Shady Lady", aircraft number 42-97385 on a mission from
Northampstead, England to Ludwigshafen, Germany. The Pilot, 2nd
Lt. Warren J. Wade, was able to land the damaged plane in French enemy
territory and Allied bombers destroyed it after the crew had evacuated
so it would not fall into enemy hands. All were captured and
three were killed when they foolishly tried to overpower their German
SS captors. The three killed were the pilot, waist gunner Sgt.
Wilbert Y. Burns, and tail gunner Sgt. Eugene Gamba. Bream
indicated in the missing air crew report that while imprisoned fellow
prisoner John Alcorn of the White L crew told him about Caust being
shot. Per Bream, Alcorn was at the farmhouse while Caust was there.
Caust was in very bad shape and appeared to be paralyzed from the neck
down. Alcorn requested medical services for Caust. One German present
responded "This man does not need a doctor - he is a Jew". My
research indicates that despite this anti-Semitic comment from one
German or Austrian present medical care was not delayed.

Other
captured crewmembers were eventually brought to the farmhouse. Sam
Hamilton was there and years later indicated that Josef Hangöbl was a
kid of
maybe 14 years old who was telling people a story about Caust attacking
him. My research indicates that Josef Hangöbl was certainly older
than
that, about 39 by my calculations.
Fellow Austrian
researcher Hans Hietl, with whom I have corresponded, had met with the
son of
Josef Hangöbl. The son was about 72 or 73 years old in 2013, so
he
would have been around four or five years old when his father was
imprisoned. Robert Kuhne indicated that he had
heard that Josef was
saying
that Caust had a gun and claimed self-defense in the killing. Kuhne
also indicated that to his knowledge the crew did not have guns on the
aircraft.

Dr. Huber arrived and applied some treatment to Caust
and ordered Herman Mayer, a local cafe owner and barber, and Ludwig
Wimmar to take Caust to the hospital in Oberndorf. Wimmar had a car and
had driven to Niedermuller's house along with his friend Mayer since no
ambulance was available. Caust was helped into the vehicle and Wimmar
drove him south about three and a half miles to the Oberndorf Hospital
where Dr. Wendt evaluated Caust. Dr.
Wendt identified a large bullet wound on the right side of the back
passing through to the left side of the stomach and a bullet wound in
the elbow. Caust was x-rayed and provided additional treatment by Dr.
Wendt. Dr. Wendt made arrangements by phone to have surgery done in
Laufen, a town immediately adjacent to Oberndorf. Dr. Wendt
accompanied Caust to Laufen where Dr. Rudolph
Ortbauer and he performed surgery. Later, Dr. Wendt would indicate that
the wounds he observed led him to believe Lt. Caust had been shot while
standing with his left arm raised to his chin. He also believed that
another shot had entered Lt. Caust's abdomen while he was still
standing. Medical records were later signed by a Dr. Metzler (appears
to be Dr. Netzler on the Missing Air Crew Report).

1st Lt. Morris Caust, a Bronx, New York boy and son of Samuel and widowed mother Bella Caust, died immediately after
surgery due to internal bleeding as a result of two rifle shots by Josef Hangöbl. Morris Caust was buried in the Oberndorf cemetery. The crew of the White L for Love ensured that after
the war
ended, neither Lt. Morris Caust nor Josef Hangöbl were forgotten
and that there would be an accounting for their lost crew mate, as we
shall see later.Robert
Kuhne had bailed out the front port bomb bay and figured he fell for around
1,000 feet before pulling the ring. He wanted to be sure he was well
clear of the doomed aircraft. He was swinging wildly a good part of the
way down, but the chute corrected itself and things calmed down. He began to hear a ripping
and popping sound and realized his harness was pulling apart and felt some regret
for having done an earlier repair on it himself as the harness began to slip off
his body. He was dealing with this issue when he hit the ground and
heard his left foot pop upon impact. He was unconscious for a very
short time, came to, and freed himself from his chute, harness, and
life vest or "Mae West" as it was called. He hid out for about
three
hours in some brush until he was captured.

Bob
Seidel, first in the waist section of the aircraft to jump, landed hard
on a woodpile and dislocated his hip
and was
bleeding from one eye where he had taken a thumb when he covered his
face to ready for impact. That same thumb also had a compound
fracture. He administered morphine to himself to help with
the
pain. The airmen's survival kits had small, single dose ampoules of
morphine called "monoject" for just
such an occasion. The morphine ampoules were made for ease of use. To
administer the dose, the end cap was removed exposing the
hypodermic needle which had pre-inserted into it a fine wire with an
exposed wire loop end for grasping. The wire would be pushed further
into the needle and ampoule assembly to break the metal seal on the
ampoule. Having served its purpose, the wire was pulled out of the
needle and discarded. The morphine could then be injected by inserting
the needle into flesh and muscle and squeezing the collapsible ampoule
tube.
Some morphine kits has small labels that were to be attached to the
clothing of the soldier indicating dose, date and time administered,
and by whom. Another practice was to pin the used ampoules to the
collar of the soldier so those administering aid later would be aware
of the prior medication. Morphine was and is a powerful narcotic drug, capable of slowing heart and respiration rates.

Bob remembered that once on the
ground, he
saw that the
shiny, reflective strips of foil called chaff, codenamed
"window", that
the
Americans had thrown out of their planes as a countermeasure to confuse
enemy radar were hanging from snow-covered fir trees and that the place
had a look of Christmas about it. Chaff was scattered across Europe. How odd andsurreal
that scene must have
been, even without the morphine. Bob hid
out in
an abandoned church and
after a while another flier from a different crew
showed up there too. The other fellow was
in pretty
bad shape, having hid out in a
stream under a
bridge. The flier was soaked and was suffering from
hypothermia. Remember that is was mid-November in snow-covered
northern Austria. Bob gave him a pair of dry socks as that was all he
could do.They
both
passed
in and out of consciousness until they were captured. Bob,
somewhat known amongst his crew for his tall tales, may have taken some
liberties
in his interview years later at the University of Texas as part of the
Oral History Project. Bob
indicates his first mission was to Ploesti, that he was a flight
engineer (he did assist the flight engineer), that he bailed out into a
blizzard, that he evaded capture in the Alps until November 29, 1944,
and that he was eventually captured by a German ski
patrol. None
of this is supported by known records and Missing Air Crew Report 9940
indicates Bob was captured along with the rest of the crew on November
16th. German records dated November 23, 1944 confirm Bob was already in
captivity and was captured
November 16th. Dad's writings indicate all the crew members were
captured and
later at Salzburg at the same time. While Ploesti had been attacked
numerous time from 1942 to 1944, my research indicates that the 55th
Bombardment Wing did not bomb Ploesti after dad's crew arrived in
Italy, although the Wing had bombed Ploesti several times before their
arrival, the last time on August 18, 1944. Bob's interview story
differs in
other regards than the recount he provided which was incorporated into
John Bills's memoirs. In his interview he indicates he landed in a
tree, had to cut himself free, and had no interactions with anyone
until he was captured, but the description above indicates he landed on
the ground and was with another airman until capture. Bob
would have been about 74 years old when he interviewed in 1999, so
perhaps his mind recalled things a little differently than the way they
really happened. Unfortunately, I've have found other incorrect or
exaggerated information about Bob Seidel. For example the
Texas
Air Force Association website (www.afadallas.org/about.htm) incorrectly
indicates Bob served on 32 missions beginning in July 1944. This is
clearly incorrect as Bob did not even arrive at the base in Italy
until September 1944 and I have several pictures of Bob at Chatham
Field, GA in August of 1944. Two such pictures can seen earlier in this
document, namely the crew photo and the photo of Bob in the jeep. Bob
may have served on, or been credited for, more than the
10 actual missions many of his original crewmates served (he did
volunteer for his final mission on which he was not required and
tougher missions could credit more than one point at one time in the
war), but 32
missions or credits would seem to be a stretch. However, Bob indicated
in his
interview the reason for having completed so many more missions that
the other crewmembers was that he filled in on other missions because
the base was short of engineers and top-turret gunners. Who
knows?
On the doomed White L, John Bills recalled dad coming back to him and
telling him that the
ship was in trouble and that they'd have to bail soon. John had climbed
out of his turret in anticipation. He remembered that after he followed
Bob Seidel and
then
Tex
Mattiza out of the ship he pulled his parachute release too early while
still in the slip stream or prop wash and
the
jerk
was so tremendous he was knocked unconscious. I've read about this
happening to many other fliers as well. He regained
consciousness on
the
way down and realized it was snowing. He noticed that
the shoes
he had tied to his parachute harness were gone and recalled not looking
forward to walking around in his heavy and clumsy flight boots.
He remembered how very quiet his descent was and recalled
seeing a
70 foot tall blue spruce tree
approaching
rapidly from
below, so he crossed his legs and braced himself for whatever
might come
next. He broke a two inch diameter branch with his chin as he
rattled down through that tall fir tree and was
unconscious again when he hit the ground. He
awoke in a sitting position, his head between his legs, dripping blood
all over
himself. His silk chute was strung up in the tree overhead
and he
was
unable to pull it down, so he just
stepped out of his harness and left the chute where it was. Fliers
always tried to hide their parachutes when they could so the Germans
would not see them
as a clue to a nearby American airman. Germans soldiers and civilians
alike valued the parachutes as the material could be used or sold to
make clothing. Many wedding gowns during the war were made from the
parachutes of downed airmen. John buried his wallet and his
escape kit, less some rations and money. He, and Sam Hamilton who was
with him later, had planned to hide out until dark but were captured
around 2:30 PM by two civilians
tracking the airmen with bird dogs. One of the searchers, a
man in his forties, had a
wooden
leg
and carried a shotgun,
and the other was a man in his thirties wielding a rifle. The
man
with
the wooden leg later told some of the crew he lost his leg fighting in
the
war in France. John Bills
spent a good deal of his time during imprisonment in the infirmary or
inside his barracks. You see, he had broken bones in both his
feet, but that painful fact was not discovered for quite some time.
Those old military parachutes were nothing like the recreational chutes
we are familiar with today. I've parachuted twice over the desert
in
southern Arizona and the landing with a modern and very controllable parachute,
if properly planned, can be made on foot, upright, and with little
shock on landing.

After
the others in the waist area had jumped, Dad
winded his way across the narrow catwalk through
the bomb bay to look
in the cockpit in hope of finding the pilot or copilot still
at the controls, maybe trying to limp
the
aircraft over the border to
Switzerland and relative freedom. Copilot Sam Hamilton was still there and dad
stayed with him until Sam put the aircraft on automatic
pilot. Sam saluted dad farewell and bailed out the bomb bay. Sam would
later say he had previously ordered dad off the ship, and had thought
he had jumped until Sam saw him still there in the rear of the ship.
Now,
there was no one at the
controls and no one left on the plane except dad. Dad's writings
indicate that he stayed with the "Pilot" until the pilot jumped. Sam
Hamilton's taped interview indicated that he was with dad and that
Pilot Stone had already jumped. Dad wrote,
"It
was then that I had to decide whether I would remain in the ship or
throw my body into space and let the will of God and the man-made
parachute guide me to earth". Dad decided on the latter and jumped out
the bomb bay. He
was the
last off the brand new B-24J. Dad
had taken some shrapnel and received
other wounds. Dad thought some of his
cuts may have come from the parachute cords or pull wire and not just
shrapnel. On his way down in the cold air and under the canopy of the
silk parachute, dad heard his brand new bomber, the first misssion
White L for Love, plow into the hillside,
ending its maiden mission. It was the end of too short a life for a
fine piece of Ford technology. Dad and the White L for Love were
both mid-western
products far out of their element - dad a city boy from Columbus,
Franklin Co., Ohio, the only child of James Leo and Helen
Leona (Creaglow) Weber and the aluminum White L for Love born
in the mind-boggling Willow Run bomber factory near Ypsilanti and
Belleville, Michigan conceived by Henry Ford himself.

Dad hit the ground
hard and was unconscious, knocked out cold. When he came to, he
was already
"surrounded by a group of farmers, who were part of
the
German land army", he indicates in his Caterpillar Club application
narrative. Last to jump, he was the first captured, probably because he
bailed out closer to the ground. He
recalled that after he was captured by the armed German civilians, he
was
marched at gunpoint to
an awaiting truck. As
he stepped up to get on, he slipped on the snow and ice on the
step. A German soldier stabbed a machine gun in his back and
screamed
something at him thinking he was about to make a dash for
it. Dad thought it was all over for him then, but he was
allowed
to get on
the
truck. Fallen airmen had been killed for much less than
that.
Poor Maury Caust had been killed for allegedly not raising his arms
fast enough
just
moments before.
Dad
was only 20 years old when all this happened, just a kid
by today's standards and comparison. It is hard for me to grasp. It had
been
four
generations since a Weber in our line had stepped foot on German
soil. It was a frightening welcome home to a now foreign and
hostile land.

All the
airmen were
found
in their hiding places, unarmed by the time of their capture if any of
them were ever even armed, and none
offered resistance. The record indicates all eleven men were
captured.
The
surviving crew were now in the hands of the German government
and
would spend the balance of the war in prisoner-of-war camps, called
Stalags. As
for that brand
new, fine smelling B-24-J15 bomber, the White L for Love,
well, the crew later learned
from German war records that their plane had crashed on hill number
618, about 20 km north of Salzburg near the small and
remote town
of Sprunged (sometimes seen as Springedt), near the town Seeham,
Austria which is on the shore of Lake Obertrumer. Bob Seidel
indicates in his
interview record that, like dad, Sam Hamilton and John Bills actually
heard the
crash. The
Germans searched the crashed
aircraft and surrounding area, salvaged some items, and found some
maps and
"cards" which they sent to a computing station for processing on
December 6, 1944.

The
White L for Love Crash Site from Luftwaffe Records; a Newspaper Article
about Dad's Imprisonment

Hans
Hietl, an Austrian resident who lives
near the crash site, emailed me a few pictures of some parts and pieces
of
the wreckage he has recovered over the years and provided the
coordinates as latitude 47.97196756, longitude 13.05756211. Later, Hans
was
kind enough to mail me, all the way from Austria, actual pieces he
recovered from the
site and these have become cherished relics. Hans told me that
for years there had been a propeller from the White L for Love around
the village, but that it has long since vanished. I sent pieces to my
brothers and one to Johns Bills III so that he would have an
artifact from his dad's plane too. John
let me know he planned to have his piece encased in Lucite and affixed
with an engraved plate to identify and preserve it over time. In the
picture below are pieces
of aluminum aircraft skin, some with portions of the word "Pureclad"
indicating aluminum sheeting with an aluminum alloy
core clad
in pure aluminum. Also seen are riveted metal strapping and
reinforcement pieces, what appears to be a ceramic switch base, a piece
of pulley or cable guide, and fragments of the scale from a hand-held
dead reckoning calculator made by the General Luminescent Corporation.

Hans
Hietl at the White L Crash Site Along with
Recovered Parts
(parts provided by Hans Hietl)

It was
not a good day for the 460th Bomb Group by any standard. In
addition to the White L, at least three other B-24s or crews from the
460th BG were lost that day, as documented in Missing Air Crew Reports
9875 and 9954. One of the aircraft was from dad's 763rd BS and
was piloted by Cecil J. Curnutt; the other was from the 760th BS and
was piloted by Chester A. Howard. Another aircraft was from dad's
763rd BS and was piloted by Lewis Kesterson.

The Curnutt
aircraft ditched or crash landed in the Adriatic Sea about 15 to 20
miles south of Ancona, Italy and about six miles off shore. They had
had problems with two of their engines, the number 1 and number 4
engines, since take off, one had been smoking and the other throwing
off some oil, both were running hot. When their No. 2 engine was
hit during the attack, the engine could only be partially feathered and
continued to windmill slowly, adding drag and robbing them of
altitude. It became unfeathered and began to windmill
rapidly. Engine number three died over the Adriatic Sea and could
not be restarted. They could not maintain altitude and fell out
of formation. All hopes of making it to the auxiliary field at
Ancona were gone. Pilot 2lt. Cecil Curnutt told the crew to brace
themselves for the impact of hitting the sea and he glided low over the
waves trying for as soft a crash landing as possible. The
co-pilot, Flight Officer Robert Schubert, reported later the front of
the ship filled with water immediately and he swam to the escape hatch,
felt someone's legs there, and push him through the hatch and followed
immediately thereafter. The aircraft had broken into two or three
sections after it hit the water and some sections sank in
minutes. Curnutt died in the ditching and his body was never
found, but the rest of the crew made it into half-inflated life rafts
from the aircraft and one dropped by a passing aircraft rendering
aid. They were rescued at sea by two Italians and a Brit in a row
boat who dropped them on land where British soldiers took them by truck
to a hospital. Cecil Curnutt was awarded the Silver Star for his
efforts that cost his life but that saved the lives of his crew.
He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing, Florence American
Cemetery, Impruneta, Italy.

The Chester A. Howard crew of the
760th BS had a fate similar to dad's. They were flying in an old
warbird nicknamed "Jane". The B-24G, aircraft number 42-78413 and
call letter the Blue I for Item, was in the number six position of the
high box of the aircraft formation's second attack wave. One engine
developed problems and was feathered while over the alps en route to
the target. The Jane carried on with three engines, dropping
behind. The pilot, 2nd Lt. Howard, had made the decision to
continue toward the target because he had aborted the previous two
missions due to aircraft problems. Turning back once was
understandable, but twice and especially twice in a row often raised
questions and cast doubt on the pilot. Howard had been chewed out
after his second abort and he was not looking forward to another
meeting with the Commanding Officer, so he decided to plow ahead on
three engines and hope for the best. Heavy flak was encountered
on the approach to the target and on the bomb run itself. A
second engine was knocked out. The bomber was lagging and made it
to the target a few minutes after the rest of the wave and dropped its
bombs. Running on two engines, Jane maintained altitude for a
while but began to drop and trail farther and farther behind the
protective formation. Equipment and unnecessary items were
jettisoned to lighten the aircraft. Flak suits, guns, and ammo
all were tossed. It soon became clear that they would not be able
to make it over the alps. The bail out signal was sounded and the
crew jumped out over the alps, some going out the nose wheel door, some
out the bomb bays, and others out the escape hatch. They bailed
out near Sprunged very near where dad and some of the others had
jumped. In fact, the wet and freezing airman who hid out with Bob
Seidel in the old church was almost certainly from the Howard
crew. The Howard crew's bombardier and four gunners were able to evade
capture for a couple of weeks by hiding in a closed inn in the
mountains. They found cans of food and plenty of wine, which they
rationed. They had been talking amongst themselves and realized
their position was not sustainable and had decided to surrender.
It turns out they weren't given the chance to surrender because
one morning a local game warden arrived to check on the inn. The
crew woke up to the game warden's rifle pointed at them. They
were captured, but that was fine with them by that time. They
convinced the game warden to let them eat before making the strenuous
trek down the mountain. He agreed and they ate and drank heartily
and hiked down the mountainside where the game warden turned them over
to German soldiers. Pilot 2nd Lt. Chester Howard may also have
evaded capture for a day. He is mentioned in a translated German
report dated November 28, 1944 found in dad's MACR. It indicates
"Police high-mountain post Flachau, County Bischofshofen, reported the
capture of Lt. Chester Howard on 17 November 1944. He had
bailed out from the aircraft by parachute". For those captured,
it was on to interrogation and a prisoner of war camp after that.

The
Kesterson aircraft was badly damaged and many of its systems were
non-functional. The crew bailed out over Yugoslavia and were
picked up by the Partisans, delivered to the British, and returned to
Bari on November 23rd.

That was how the mission went for the Red
Force dad was on. Remember the Blue Force? Let's not forget
the other mission flown that day. As for the Blue Force, whose
mission it was to bomb troop concentrations in Yugoslavia, well, they
experienced no flak, no fighters, and they missed the IP due to
weather. They swung back around and found the target covered in
clouds. So all aircraft turned for home, jettisoned their bombs
in the Adriatic Sea along the way, and safely landed. Sometimes
life depends on what straw you choose.

I have a copy of Major
Roger Warner's post-mission narrative report dated November 17, 1944 to
the Commanding General of the 55th Bombardment Wing relating the
statistics for the 460th bomb group. The major indicates that of the 31
aircraft from the 460th bomb group, 28 made it to the target and
dropped 41.25 tons of 500-lb RDX (general high explosive) bombs on the
target. My research indicates that, overall, all the aircraft from the
four bomb groups on the Munich mission dropped a total of 143.25 tons
of bombs. Three 460th bomb group aircraft aborted the mission and
returned home, one due to engine failure, one with supercharger
problems, and another with an oil leak; five had to land at other
friendly fields after the mission; one ditched in the Adriatic Sea; and
only 18 returned to their home base, four of which had flak damage. At
the time of his writing the report four aircraft were listed as lost.
As for those four, he indicates that aircraft "2011", dad's plane,
radioed at 1:12 PM that two engines were out and that they were trying
to make it across the Alps. Aircraft "8462" was last seen near Treviso
under attack by three enemy fighters, "8413" (Chester Howard's bomber)
was last seen at 2:00 PM struggling near Udine, and aircraft "8506" was
last seen at 1:02 PM with one engine feathered immediately after the
target was bombed. I have not found missing air crew reports for two of
the aircraft Major Warner mentions, i.e., aircraft 8462 and 8506.

You
may recall that original crew members Satterfield, Murphy, and Rudolph
were not on the White L for Love for various reasons previously
described. I've wondered for quite some time how Dana
Satterfield, John Murphy, and Joe Rudolph felt when they learned their
crewmates had been shot down. I got some small insight from
John's daughter, Sandra Murphy Conley, who indicates that her dad was
not given time to dwell on the loss much and was assigned to fly a
mission the following day to keep his mind off things.

Caterpillar
Club Membership Card and Pin

As an aside, dad's
jump
that day qualified him to become a member of the famous Caterpillar
Club (Switlik Parachute Company's branch). Organized in 1922
in
Dayton, Ohio, membership was
comprised solely of individuals who had used a parachute in an
emergency situation. Some of the more well-known Caterpillar
Club
members
were former President
George Bush, General Doolittle, and Colonel Charles Lindbergh.
Dad's essay he wrote as part of his membership application
served
as an important source of information for this webpage. It is
interesting to note that in addition to the Caterpillar Club there were
at least two other clubs that were comprised of servicemen. The
Gold Fish Club's members were aviators who had been rescued at sea and
the Guinea Pig Club restricted its membership to RAF aircrew who were
severely disfigured in service and who underwent medical reconstructive
surgery.

Judith M.
Heimann mentions the Caterpillar Club in her factual novel entitled The Airmen And The
Headhunters
which is about a B-24 aircrew downed on November 16, 1944 over the
jungles of
Borneo and the
efforts of the local natives to hide them for months from the brutal
Japanese soldiers. Crew members referred to their jungle hideout as
the Polecat Gulch or the Club Borneo branch of the Caterpillar Club. Coincidentally,
Heimann's story is about a crew shot down the same day my dad was shot
down and also in a brand new, first mission B-24J.

Captivity

"Für Sie
ist der Krieg vorbei!" That's what many American
airmen were told, often in English, by their German captors or
at
Dulag Luft
where most
of the Allied airmen who fell from the German sky were first held and
processed
before being sent on to more permanent prisoner-of-war camps.In
English, this simply means “For you the
war is over!”It
was a common
expression of
the Germans both for use on
captured enemy and for use among themselves when captured or seriously
wounded. But it was a beginning
just as much as it was an ending. The capture by German forces was the
start of an entirely new chapter and experience for the crew and their
families back home who might be waiting months for word on
their loved
ones, painfully aching to know if they were dead or alive.
The
captured crew were first taken to a farmhouse outside
Lamprechtshausen, Austria. They saw Captain Cliff Stone
there. His ankle, and
possibly
his leg, was broken and his leg was turning black. Tex Mattiza had John
Bills
help
him splint Captain Stone's leg. Not only could Tex splint a
leg,
the crew soon found out he could speak and understand German, which was
a skill that got them out of a lot of trouble at times. One
crew
member thought Tex deserved some sort of medal for all the good his
knowledge of German served the captured crew.

Sam Hamilton indicated that of the eleven man crew, six were injured
and one was dead. Kuhne, who indicates the crew were gathered together
in Traustein, Austria, mentions that the pilot had a back injury, one
of the gunners had a hip injury, and that he himself had a badly
sprained ankle
and torn ligaments. He also indicates that Lt. Morris "Maury"
Caust was mortally wounded. Some
recall seeing Caust or his body at the farmhouse,
others did
not. Next,
they were taken to Gestapo HQ in Salzburg for holding and some initial
interrogation. Dad
indicates in his August 20, 1945 testimony given to Special Agent Kevin
D. Kelley who was investigating war crimes committed against American
soldiers in advance of the Dachau war crimes trials that he and the
other captured airmen were taken to Salzburg
within a few hours after capture. The History of the 460th Bomb Group
indicates the crew were held at "Mirabella Castle" [sic], which I
believe is actually Mirabell Palace. John Bills's memoirs refer to
being held at Salzburg, Austria in a tunnel in an abbey. Clifford Stone
refers
to it as "Mirabelle Palace" and indicates they were held in the
basement. Stone also indicates that while the crew was in Salzburg
during a bombing, they were taken to a cave in the side of a hill. The
cave had tracks leading into it. This is very important and reminded me
of a story my mother told me about dad's capture. She said she was told
by one of dad's war buddies that they were held in a cave while
Salzburg was bombed. She said he told her that dad and some other
prisoners dug to try to escape. They dug through to an adjoining cave
where they found 150 dead American sergeants. Somehow they learned that
the soldiers were killed because they could not be fed. I do not know
if this is true, but it appears to reconcile with Stone's recollection
of being held captive in a Salzburg cave.

The
town of
Salzburg, including the German inhabitants and
prisoners alike,
was bombed twice
by B-24s while dad was there. Things
turned bad
quickly when the prisoners encountered the local people not long
after the bombings while being forced to help
clear
streets of rubble and other debris. German Sergeant
Schulmann
protected the prisoners from the angry mob and went so far as to order
his
men to fix bayonets on their rifles. An SS officer came by and
gave Sgt. Schulmann
hell for taking this attitude toward German citizens and made Schulmann
order the bayonets removed. As soon as the SS officer was out
of sight, the bayonets were put back on the rifles.
The
sergeant had already confided to some of the prisoners that he had been
at the Russian front and was hoping for an American victory, and
soon, as he greatly preferred Americans to Russians. Dad
recalls during this time they received no
hospital care, although virtually all the prisoners were wounded.
As for those bombs that were dropped, some had delayed
fuses
and exploded days after initial impact. A couple sources I have read
describe yet another surreal site the prisoners saw in Salzburg. A
bicycle, seemingly undamaged, hung by one wheel from a banner pole on
the side of a building a couple
stories above the rubble-strewn street, blown there by a bomb blast.
Early in my research I ran across a picture of that scene in a book I
skimmed in a bookstore, but cannot re-locate it.

A knock on the
door, a man
with a telegram ...
...
and later, after two months in limbo, some relief
(dated
November 30, 1944)
knowing he was still alive.
(dated January
29, 1945) Next the
captured airmen were taken to Dulag Luft 1 interrogation center at
Oberursel, about 30 miles
northwest of
Frankfurt, for official questioning and evaluation. Along
the way they passed through the marshalling yards at Rosenheim, Germany
which was the target of their fifth mission on October 20th. It looked
like their bombs may have missed the target because the yards seemed to
be in good shape. While there a German soldier offered John Bills some
tea and bread and tried to talk to him. The soldier's friends got angry
with the friendly soldier for showing this small kindness.

The
interrogation
at Dulag Luft 1 was around
November 22. Some crew think that they stayed there about three days.
Dulag Luft was not a single location, but rather consisted of three
separate installations - the interrogation center located at Oberursel,
a hospital at Hohemark, and a transit camp, which by the time dad was
captured was located at Wetzlar. Prisoners were first taken to the
interrogation center and placed in solitary confinement. Generally
speaking, there was no systematic physical abuse practiced at the
interrogation center, but the process of treatment during processing
and confinement did have a psychological toll. Prisoners were stripped,
sometimes issued coveralls or sometimes given their clothes back. They
were held in isolation typically four or five days, although some would
be held up to a month or so. During that time they were denied
cigarettes, toiletries, and Red Cross parcels. They were interrogated
once or twice a day. Slapping was not uncommon and threatening death
was
a common practice, usually in combination with accusing the fallen
airmen as spies while demanding technical information from the
prisoners as proof that they were in fact airmen.

A typical ploy the German
interrogator would use would be to
ask a question and when the airman responded that in accordance with
the Geneva
convention all he was required to provide, as he had already done, was
his
name, rank, and serial number, the interrogator would inform the airman
that the
Geneva convention had been entered into long ago in 1929, many years
following
World War I, and that warfare and circumstances had changed much since
then.The
interrogator would explain
that without additional information, such as group number, bomb
squadron, base
location, mission details, etc.,actually
tying the prisoner to the downed
aircraft or to the Allied forces there was little choice left except to
consider
the prisoner a spy subject to execution.The
interrogator would stress that the prisoner
would have to be turned
over to the Gestapo and that his treatment there would not be as kind
as it had
been so far.The
interrogator would
assure the prisoner that providing additional information was strictly
in the
prisoner's best interest to avoid execution.The
interrogator would often divulge some fact such as the airman's bomb
group, base location, or group commander's name in order to convince
the
prisoner that whatever information the prisoner would provide was most
likely
already known by the Germans and would neither be beneficial to the
Germans nor
harmful to the Allied effort.It
was
about saving the prisoner from mistreatment or even death at the hands
of the
Gestapo.Sometimes the
prisoner would be
told that without the additional information no notice could be sent
back home
to let parents, spouse, and loved ones know that the prisoner had been
captured
and was still alive.Sharing
the
information would provide hope and relief to those loved ones back home
desperate for information. I
think dad must have fallen for that one because it appears from the
German records that dad gave his birth date and home town. At times,
as
a psychological ploy, the mock shooting of a fellow airman
would
be staged to reinforce the threat of death for non-cooperation.
Eventually, the Germans found kind persuasion more effective.
Meals
at Dulag Luft typically consisted of two slices of bread and jam for
breakfast and some sort of coffee substitute, lunch was a watery soup,
and dinner was two more slices of bread. Drinking water had to be
requested from the guards. Medical care was reserved for only the
seriously wounded. Most injuries went untreated.

The
interrogation itself was systematic with information needed summarized
on a kind of arrival form that the interrogator would complete as the
prisoner was being questioned. The information sought varied from
benign personal information to specific unit, combat tactics,
organizational structure, mission, and location information

After interrogation dad and other prisoners were then taken to the
transit camp, Wetzlar, where they were issued
clothing. They left there about November
27. After
that, for the enlisted men, it was
off to Stalag
Luft IV about 400 miles to the northeast. Stalag Luft IV
was west and slightly north of Tychowo, Pomerania, Poland
(Gross
Tychow in German). At
one of these
stops along the way to the Stalag they were beaten up a
bit, and some were beaten badly by angry civialians. The
trip from
Wetzlar to Stalag Luft IV took five days. It is unclear if
all
the
crew were jammed into train boxcars or if just the sick and
wounded prisoners got to ride. Some may have
marched some of the way. The officers were sent to an officers' prison
camp called Stalag I in Barth, Germany. Sam
Hamilton recounted his post-capture trip to Stalag I in a July 1985 VFW
newsletter. He indicates that his trip after capture entailed
stops at Salzburg, then on a winding trek to Stuttgart, Frankfurt, then
to Dulag Luft for interrogation, and finally to Stalag I. He indicated
the journey was by crowded cattle cars and by forced march. We will
learn more of Stalag I later.

Stalag
Luft IV

Dad
indicates in his 1945 testimony that he was taken to Stalag Luft IV
on December 5th. For dad and the enlisted men, the march from the last
train
stop to Stalag IV was a two mile journey by
foot.
There are records that on some occasions the guards forced the airmen
to run the entire way and those who would not, or could not, keep up
were tormented along the
way with
bayonets in their backs and buttocks and
guard dogs let
loose to bite their legs and thighs.

While at Stalag IV dad was assigned to Block D, roughly the
southeastern quarter of the prison camp. My research indicates
that all of the crew were at Stalag IV, except for the
officers, who were at Stalag Luft I.
Some
of the crew stayed at that camp until about January 28, 1945 and were
then moved to Stalag Luft I near Barth, Germany on the Baltic Sea,
which is the camp the officers of their crew had been sent to after
their capture.
This last move was because the Russian forces were advancing
deeper into German-held territory. Bob Seidel indicates in his
1999 interview that he was
transported to Stalag Luft I by train beginning January 6 and arrived
at Barth on January 14, 1945.

One brief memoir by Fred Weiner on the Stalagluft4.org website
indicates that the January trip to Stalag I at Barth began with a
terrible forced march from Stalag Luft IV to waiting boxcars into which
the prisoners were piled.
After being loaded in, it was an eight day trip in the overcrowded
boxcars to Barth. If you fell asleep, which the men had to do in shifts
because there was not enough room for everyone to sleep at once, other
prisoners fell asleep on top of you. Weiner notes that there
were
so many prisoners on him, he lost the circulation in his legs which
swelled to the point where his boots had to be cut off his feet. There
was a
doctor with a southern accent on his boxcar and he watched while the
doctor performed surgery on a prisoner's leg to remove shrapnel. All
the
doctor had to use was a straight razor and a candle with which to
sterilize it. Weiner recounts that during those eight days of travel,
the Germans stopped the train only once to let the prisoners off to
relieve themselves outside. Many men were made sick by the unsanitary
conditions and the foul water available during the trip.

Shortly after dad had been transferred (his written record indicates he
was "assigned" to Stalag Luft I on December 5, 1944 - I am not sure if
that is when he was notified, departed, or arrived), Stalag Luft IV was
totally
evacuated on February 6, 1945 in what is now called the Black March, an
86 day, 500 to 600 mile march across the Polish and German countryside
through
blizzards, ice, rain, and muck, spanning winter and early
spring. Some
appropriately
call it the "Death March" as prisoners who could not keep up
were shot and others simply died due to exhaustion.
The
prisoners were
tormented along the way and endured severe brutality. The prisoners
were often left to forage for their own food and many died of hardship
and disease. Adding to the sadness of the march is the fact that there
was never an actual destination for those poor souls. They
were simply
set out from Stalag IV and forced to march for months. They
marched until they heard artillery and then veered off in another
direction until the big guns were heard again. Rats
and geese
were caught and eaten raw, some prisoners actually grazed on grass at
the side of the road, others ate tree bark and leaves. Slop was stolen
from pigs troughs and if a
prisoner were lucky he may have stolen a handful of livestock grain
from
a barn he had stayed in the night before and eaten it raw, while
marching the next day. Two prisoners were shot for stealing food from
the Germans. It has been estimated that up to 1,600 American
airmen died
on that pointless and destinationless march. Some Americans were killed
when strafed by their own P-38s. What
remained of the
8,000 or so prisoners reached Stalag 357 near Fallingbostel around
April 3, 1945 and remained there about a week before marching on.
Liberation for these poor souls was by the British and/or
Canadians as
the prisoners
were all found sitting in a drainage ditch near the banks of the Elbe
River, Lauenburg, Germany on May 2, 1945. As noted earlier,
Cpl.
Leonard Siegfried of the 460th Bomb Group, 762nd Bomb Squad had been
shot down on October 17th and was on the death march. He
recorded
the event in his journal and notes that they met the British 2nd Army
at 12:29 PM at Boizenburg, near the Elbe River. Like other
sources, Siegfried indicates the now ex-prisoners did not
receive much help and were simply told to march west to friendly
lines. Siegfried indicates that the prisoners were told
they'd
meet a food truck within two days and they did. It provided
them
doughnuts and pea soup. Sadly, the doughnuts were gone by the time he
reached
the food truck.

John L. Lenburg, an airman from dad's own 460th Bomb Group, but from
the 760th
Bomb Squad, provides a great amount of detail in his book Kriegsgefangenen #6410:
Prisoner of War.
Lenburg was shot down in the fairly well-known aircraft Miss Fortune
on June 30, 1944 and
survived the Death March. I have included a picture of Miss Fortune
above at the bottom of
the description of dad's sixth mission.

Plaque
at the Stalag Luft IV Site Commemorating the Death March

Ominously,
not long before the evacuation of the camp, the Germans had begun
excavating a huge pit near the southeast corner of the camp. The
Germans indicated it was a potato storage pit, but many of the
prisoners thought that there was a much more sinister intended use. The
camp was evacuated and abandoned before the pit was put to whatever use
for which it was designed.

Stalag
Luft I

Fortunately,
dad had been moved from Stalag IV earlier, before the Death March. Dad
indicates in his 1945 testimony
that he was held at Stalag IV until January 30. 1945. I have often
thought that crewmember
Harold Adams may have
been on the Death March. The National Archives indicate he was at
Stalag IV, but he does not subsequently appear on any roster I've seen
for
Stalag I,
where all the other crew members spent the balance of the
war. However, John Bills's memoirs do indicate that Harold was
at Stalag I. Stalag I was referred to by some prisoners affectionately
(and
jokingly) as "The Rest Haven of the Baltic" or later as "Hitler's
Hilton". The town of Barth on
the southern flank of the Baltic Sea
was the closest town to Stalag Luft I. In fact it was close
enough that the
prisoners could see the cathedral spire in the distance. In
close proximity to the prison
camp was an important
Luftwaffe airbase at which fighter and
bomber
squadrons were stationed (Hindenburg 152, Lehrgeschwader I (Stuka), LG
1 with Messerschmitt 29 Bf 109 single-engine fighters, among others).
Co-located with these facilities was a "Flakschool" or anti-aircraft
gunnery training school, and, beginning in
1943, a branch plant of the Heinkel aircraft works, manned by forced
laborers from several nearby concentration camps. The location of the
flak
school, shown in this picture taken from the stalag, so close to the
prison camp was in violation of the
1929
Geneva Agreement on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Geneva
Convention). Article 9 of the agreement states that a
prisoner-of-war may never be brought to an area where he would be
exposed to the
fire of the combat area or be used through his presence there to
protect certain points or areas from bombardment/shooting. This second
picture is taken from the Flak school and shows the stalag in the
background.

Stalag
was a term used
for prisoner-of-war camps.Stalag
is an
abbreviation for "Stammlager",
itself a short form of
the full name "Mannschaftsstamm und straflager".
As
previously noted, I
have a record that dad spent
some amount of time at Stalag IV, then transferred to Stalag I at
Barth,
Germany on
December 5,
1944 where he remained along with approximately 9,000 other
primarily American and British prisoners-of-war, or "Kriegies", until
the advancing Russian forces
liberated the
camp on May 1, 1945. Dad's prisoner barracks was located in
the
West compound of the camp. Crewmate
John Bills
and the others were also there, but in other compounds.
The Commandant of Stalag Luft I during the
time dad was a prisoner was Oberst (Colonel) Von Warnstedt. He had
recently replaced Col. Willibald Scherer who, rumor had it, was
relieved of his duties for being too lenient. Supposedly he
faced
charges in Berlin.

I have one
record from the National Archives, Prisoner of War Data
File, 12/7/1941 - 11/19/1946 that notes dad's "Camp" as Dulag
Luft
Gross-Tychow, Dulag 12. Perhaps this is where he was processed into or
out of Stalag IV.
Dulag derives from the German
Durchgangslager der Luftwaffe (Transit
Camp - Air Force). Perhaps the American prisoners were moved there at
some point or perhaps it is just a poor transcription of Stalag IV,
Gross Tychow, Poland the first stalag where dad was held prisoner; I am
not sure. I
am also not sure why the telegram (far above, right) indicates in
handwritten notes internment at Stalag XVII-B, a Stalag located in
Krems, Austria. Perhaps dad passed through or otherwise spent some time
there as well, but I've never seen
any record of that. Note,
however, the
incorrect spelling of his handwritten name, so maybe that note is a
mistake as well. Dad never spoke much
about his time as a
prisoner, or even about the war itself, just a few stories here and
there.
One old veteran of that war, George Fielder of Green Valley, Arizona,
whom I was honored to know while working in southern Arizona, told me
that they
all were ordered not to talk about what happened there, to forget all
about it,
and leave it behind them. George had served with the 8th Army Air
Force, 303rd Bomb Group, 358th
Bomb Squad, known as the Hell's Angels, and was at one time a wing
commander, I believe. The
stalag was divided into several separate and isolated
compounds. Compounds housed the barracks and facilities used by the
prisoners. In the yard where the prisoners could roam outside their
barracks a warning wire was mounted on stakes about two feet off the
ground. Prioners could not cross the warning wire as guards
were
authorized to shoot without question. Beyond the security wire was a
high barbed wire fence, then a wide area with coiled barbed
wire
on the ground, and finally the outer barbed wire fence. Beyond that
fence was the woods or in some areas a bullrush swamp about 100 yards
away at the nearest point.

The
size and structure of the stalag changed over time to meet the
increasing influx of prisoners, especially
the great and increasing
numbers of
American prisoners. Click HERE
or click the picture to see an enlarged aerial view of Stalag Luft I.
Eventually, in April of 1942, the American soldiers were separated
from their British counterparts. This meant that the Americans no
longer had as easy an access to the news from the secret radio the
British had created and kept hidden in one of their barracks. The radio
was referred to as "Canary" and was one of the primary ways the
prisoners kept abreast of the war's progress. It took some time to
gather all the necessary parts, but the Americans were eventually able
to build their own radio set. However, structure, housing arrangement,
and size of the stalag were not the only changes that occurred.

Another
change involved the leadership of the stalag system and the mindset of
those who were in charge of the actual stalags. The control of the
stalags for airmen was under the purview of the Luftwaffe, but
high level oversight was given to Reichsführer Heinrich
Himmler,
who headed many organizations, including the Schutzstaffel, or
SS
as it was better known. This occurred on September
25, 1944
when Hitler ordered that office of the Generalinspekteur des
Kriegsgefangenenwesens (KGW or Office of General Inspector of
the
Prisoner of War Administration) was handed over to Himmler. It is
believed that this change was due to Hitler's lack of
trust in the military leadership after the July 20, 1944 failed bombing
assassination attempt on his life involving high level Wehrmacht
officers. Heinrich Himmler himself visited many of the stalags,
including Stalag I on April 27th, 1945. In February 1945, all Jewish
prisoners were taken
from their barracks or sorted out during Appell (roll call) and segregated. They
were still allowed to dine at the mess building with the other allied
soldiers, at least until the mess building burned down, but for most of
the time, the Jewish soldiers were kept separate. It was an ominous
situation and naturally caused a great deal of concern among the
prisoners, especially those who had arrived from Stalag IV and who
remembered the "potato storage" pits that had been dug there.

Heinrich Himmler visits Shirokaya Street POW Camp in Minsk, Russia

The official inventory of prisoners at Stalag I by the Swiss Protecting Power in
February 1945 indicated the prisoner count by nationality as: 7,202
American; 1,144 British; 260 Canadians; 59 Australians; 49 South
Africans; 30 New Zealanders; 5 Rhodesians; 1 Liberian; and 34
unclassified new arrivals.

The prisoners and their leadership maintained a military decorum to the
extent practicable under the circumstances. The Senior Allied Office
during my dad's time there was Colonel Hubert A. "Hub" Zemke, the
American fighter ace from the 56th Fighter Group. Hub had recently
taken charge there himself after his arrival in December 1945 and
continued the previously established structure already in place. The
American prisoner command structure was called Provisional X Wing (the
"Provisional" portion was dropped after liberation) and
the compounds -
West
(sometimes referred to as South), North 1, North 2, and North 3 - were
referred to as Groups. Each barracks with every compound was
assigned a Squadron name. Officers were assigned to each Group and
Squadron. This arrangement provided some order and familiarity to the
prisoners who were use to such a formal military structure. Leaders
were assigned to various duties and committees and orders were issued
through the established command structure. This arrangement had the
added benefit of giving a single voice and sole contact point between
the Germans Stalag command and the prisoner of war population.

A Guard Tower at Stalag Luft IAfter
Liberation, a 48-star
American Flag Flies over the Stalag

I do recall a
few things dad mentioned over the years, though.
He told me about his interrogation at Dulag Luft. The
interrogator wanted to know why a good
German boy (ein Weber, after all!) would turn on the
Fatherland. Dad recalled how
getting Red Cross packages was a blessing and how the
Americans would trade their white bread for the German’s
black bread. The Germans thought our bread was like cake,
and the Americans thought the heavy and dense German black bread was
the better
deal. Of course, the trade
was
for the real
German
black bread that the Germans made for themselves, not
for the
prisoner-of-war black bread, "kriegsbrot", or "goon bread" as the
prisoners called
it,
served to the Americans by
the Germans. That bread contained
50% bruised rye grain, 20% sliced sugar beets, 20% tree flour (i.e.,
saw
dust!), and 10% minced leaves and straw, per the captured official
German
recipe for prisoner-of-war bread from the Food Providing Ministry in
Berlin -
the recipe must have varied somewhat because some prisoners found sand,
glass,
and large splinters in their prisoner-of-war bread. One
Special
Order dated February 26, 1945 issued at the Stalag by Lt. Col. Greening
who was a ranking POW in charge of one of
the compounds, informs the POWs that the South compound had reported
finding ground glass in their bread, and that the men
should slice their bread thin and report any glass findings to
headquarters.

Bread and Red Cross
Parcel
Deliveries at Stalag Luft I

Putting glass in bread was one of the dirty tricks the Germans played,
but
the POWs had their own tricks too. One great story former
Stalag I
prisoner John Vietor recounts in his memoirs published in
1951 and entitled Time
Outis
about one of the guards and his huge and fierce Alsatian guard
dog. The Alsatian, or German Shepperd, was used by
the
Germans to help guard the compounds and control the prisoners. The
dogs bred, selected, and trained for use by the Germans were
the
fiercest
and
largest of their
breed. Vietor claims that the huge dogs
could snap a man's wrist in two and
that the dogs were actually known to jump through a barrack's
windows
to attack a prisoner without cause. Well, evidently, one guard was a
notorious slacker and would
frequently nap near one of the barracks. Over a period of weeks, the
prisoners befriended the dog by giving it scraps of food and talking
kindly to it. Finally, when
the time was right, one of the prisoners ordered the dog to attack the
guard and it did! It ripped the guard up pretty good even while he beat
it off with the butt of his rifle. The guard survived but was never
allowed to have a dog for his watch again. By the way, the
war did not end well for the Stalag I dogs, as I note later.

Another trick was done when the prisoners knew the German guards were
in the crawl space under the barrack's floor eavesdropping for military
intelligence and for escape plans. The prisoners would talk
about
secret weapons and all sorts of imaginary plans entirely for the
benefit of the eavesdropping guards. On at least one occasion
when the prisoners had had enough
storytelling they poured boiling water through the floor boards onto
the guards below. The angry ferret actually burst
up through the floor boards to see who had doused him. This action
resulted in some backlash for the prisoners. Commandant
Warnstedt
issued a written warning about the "impetuous trampling on the
floor and pouring of hot water" dated June 24, 1944 in which
he
recounted
the occurrence and said that "... the Ps.o.W. will risk their
lives wantonly if this undisciplined attitude will not be
altered". Not all guards
were despised by the prisoners. In fact, one guard, nicknamed Joe
Bananas, was hid from the Russians by prisoners in one barracks until
he could surrender to American forces.

Dad's
German POW
Dog Tag (Stalag IV)Dad
(right) at Stalag I after Liberation

[Note:
On the German dog tag (above, left) the abbreviation "kgf" stands for
"Kriegsgefangenen" or "Prisoner-of-war". "lgr 4 d lw" stands for "lager
4d luftwaffe" or "camp 4d, air force". "4909" was dad's
prisoner-of-war number. Note the perforations running across
the
center. That's where the tag could be broken in half if you
died. One half stayed with the body, the other half was for
German
records. The other picture (above, right) was one
I found online. It is a picture of my dad, on the right, after
liberation but still at
Stalag I near Barth, Germany. After the German guards fled, the
American soldiers confiscated the camera equipment (and everything
else!) the Germans left behind and took pictures. Thankfully,
dad
appeared in this one.]

Aside from
the poor rations and tainted food, a 1985
VFW newsletter in which Sam Hamilton describes his months of captivity
notes that most stalags, such as Stalag I, were lice-ridden and that a
rare treat would be a three-minute bath in the icy waters of the North
Sea.
Dad
said the German people hated the Americans at that time,
especially the airmen for bombing their cities. Many Germans had been
displaced from their homes due to the bombings, some had lost friends
and family members either as a result of the bombings or elsewhere in
the war. Urban dwellers were constantly harassed by air raid sirens at
all hours of the day and night. Some of their children regularly slept
in air raid shelters so that they would not have to be waken and taken
to the shelters at night. Many children played in the rubble of what
had been their neighborhoods and many adopted a new wartime hobby -
collecting and trading bomb shrapnel. Dad said that
the
prisoners-of-war were sometimes forced to clear streets and carry
wounded after bombings and that the
citizens and farmers would
sometimes spit on them and attack them. He
said getting captured by the civilian forces (as he was) was more
dangerous and
less desirable than getting captured by the official German
military. The civilian forces were known for taking out
their anger on captured prisoners in retribution for the repeated and
prolonged
bombings. The civilian forces were generally
not punished for hurting or even killing the downed airmen.
At least when captured by the regular military, you stood a better
chance of surviving the initial capture if you
cooperated. Middlebrook writes a bit about bailing out and capture
versus escape chances in his book about the
Schweinfurt-Regensburg
mission. He indicates that early on in the war the civilians,
especially the rural Germans, were actually fairly friendly and would
not typically harm an allied airman, but later into the war they,
especially the urban civilians, were apt to be more hostile, having
suffered more and perhaps having lost relatives, friends,
possessions, and livelihoods. Middlebrook mentions the informal,
prevailing bail out philosophy - if you were bailing out over
Germany, especially near built-up or developed areas where escape
chances were minimal, it was considered best to pull your
ripcord
early so that you'd be more apt to be spotted and captured by the
German military and not risk suffering at the hands of the civilians,
but if you were bailing out over occupied territories known to
have working escape organizations or networks it was best to
wait
as long as
possible to pull your ripcord to maximize your chance of meeting allied
sympathizers who would help with escape and evasion. Even so,
resistance forces approached downed airman cautiously and with good
cause. The Germans were known to have infiltrated resistance
organizations by posing as downed Allied airmen. There were often
very tense moments when resistance forces or sympathetic locals and
downed airman first came into contact.

Many
survival kits contained small amounts of foreign currency or small
gifts such as a sewing kit that could be used for barter or to reward
locals for their aid in helping a downed airman return to friendly
forces. Some fliers had "blood chits" in their kits or sewn onto
the inside of their flight jackets. The chits were notices in
many different languages explaining that the airman was American, that
he did not speak their language, an enemy of the Germans, and that
every assistance should be offered to the airman in affecting his safe
return. The chits often indicated that a reward would be
paid. At one point the reward paid by the US military was $500
per airman. At times, the Germans also offered a reward for
downed Allied airmen. Airmen were warned that in places such as
North Africa and the Middle East where allegiances were sketchy to
begin with seemingly friendly locals would often turn a downed Allied
airman over to the Germans who happened to be paying a higher reward at
the time. Which side an airman might be turned over to sometimes
depended less on the locals' allegiance or political views and more on
the basic finances. At one Middle Eastern base on the route to
Italy crewman saw a sign indicating that any Arab seen on base should
be shot. When asked why they were told that local Arabs had
delivered Allied airman to the Germans.

One other
source makes a further distinction regarding capture by the German
military. Evidently, some felt that getting captured by troops
near an active war front may have been only slightly preferable to
being captured by civilians. Being captured by German military
not actively engaged in recent combat appears to be the most desirable
scenario when bailing out over Germany. The following is an
actual picture of an airman from dad's own 460th Bomb Group, 763rd Bomb
Squad. The airman has been identified as Richard C. Theis of the
Joseph F. Semradek crew (Missing Air Crew Report No. 6952). Theis
is descending in a parachute after bailing out of his B-24H Liberator
on July 19, 1944. Two German soldiers can be seen rushing toward
the airman in preparation of his capture. Four of the crew died
before bail out in the blazing bomber, named Big Time Operator, and the
six other crew members were all captured after bailing out near a
German flak battery. The picture below was taken by a 17 year old
German soldier from the flak installation. The commanding officer
of the flak installation ordered his soldiers to protect the American
airmen from the "crazy town folk". July 17th was a very bad day
for the 460th Bomb Group as their are seven Missing Air Crew Reports on
file for that date. German historian Susanne Meinl informed me
that she believes dad and his crew were the replacement crew for either
of two 763rd Bomb Squad crews lost that day - the Semradek and
Rhodabarger crews.

Gregory
Freeman details the remarkable rescue
of Allied
airmen from the mountainous region of Yugoslavia with the aid of Draza
Mihailovich and his army in his
novel entitled The
Forgotten 500. Allied
airmen shot down over Yugoslavia were cared for and protected for
months by the mountain villagers and eventually brought together in
Pranjane under the protection of Mihailovich's guerilla soldiers.
Operation Halyard was organized by the American OSS in Bari, Italy and
entailed the construction of an impromptu, makeshift airstrip on a
mountain slope barely large enough for 15th Army Air Force C-47s from
Italy to safely land. With German forces in several locations within a
fifty mile radius, the airfield was constructed by the airmen,
Yugoslavian soldiers, and villagers in preparation of the evacuation.
Finally on August 9, 1944 in the dark of night the sound of C-47s
was heard overhead, hay bales marking the general boundaries
of
the cleared field were lit, and one by one three aircraft landed. A
great celebration ensued as the airmen and Yugoslavian soldiers all
rejoiced in knowledge that they had not been forgotten after all by the
Allies. Each of the three aircraft carried away only 12 airmen, the
numbers being limited due to the night conditions, the short length of
the runway, and the location of trees at the runway's end. Many airmen
had shed their shoes, coats, and other clothing as a thank you for the
Serbian friends who marched in the winter, shoeless or in felt boots or
slippers.

The
night landings were deemed too dangerous and word went out that there
would be no further night rescue attempts. The airmen were surprised
the next morning when the sky over Pranjane filled with C-47s and
their fighter plane escorts there to rescue even more of the
downed
American, British, French, Italian, and Russian airmen. In those two
days 272 airmen were rescued. The airstrip continued to serve as a
debarkation point for other airmen who could find their way to
Pranjane. Through December 27, 1944 a total of 512 airmen
were
returned to friendly bases. The missions would not be possible except
for the aid and sacrifice of Mihailovich's guerillas and village
supporters, some of whom gave their lives protecting the airmen in
their
care.

Sadly,
for a variety of reasons and to the shame of the
Allies, politics turned on Mihailovich and that staunch, faithful
Allied supporter was abandoned by the US and British in favor of Josip
Broz Tito.
Tito's forces prevailed in the war and Yugoslavia, under Tito's
leadership, became a communist nation, furthering the spread of
Stalinism into eastern Europe. Winston Churchill once said one of his
greatest mistakes was his handling of Yugoslavia during the war. As for
brave Mihailovich, he was arrested by Tito's forces in March of 1946,
suffered through a trial in June, found guilty, executed by
firing
squad on July 17, 1946, and buried in an unmarked grave. Draza
Mihailovich's last words were "I have strived for
much, I undertook much, but the gales of the world have carried away
both me and my work". All
of
this in spite of the pleas and demonstrations of hundreds of freed
airmen and OSS officials to be heard that Mihailovich was not the
German collaborator as accused by Tito, but rather an ally of the
Allied cause and savior of hundreds of airmen. Finally, on April 9,
1948 the US government recognized its fault and awarded Draza
Mihailovich the Legion of Merit. The award was issued personally by
President Truman. However, politics were such that a public recognition
of Mihailovich could not be made for fear of escalating tense relations
with the Soviet bloc nations and the award was not publically known of
until 1967. It took almost another 40 years before the award would be
presented. On May 9, 2005 the award was finally presented to his
daughter, seventy-eight year old
Dr. Gordana Mihailovich by surviving airmen and OSS officers.
Gordana kissed a picture of her father and
wept.

In an entirely different setting than that of the European theater of
operations, Heimann's novel
provides a detailed recount of the aid
one very unusual group
provided to a B-24 crew in helping them evade
capture by the Japanese in Borneo. Several tribes of natives
worked together to hide the downed airmen for months while the Japanese
actively searched for them in the dense jungle. In the
process of
protecting and hiding the airmen, the tribes returned to the practice
of headhunting with local Japanese soldiers providing the trophies they
sought. As I noted earlier in my discussion of the Caterpillar Club,
the subject aircraft was coincidentally a brand new B-24J also shot
down on November 16, 1944.

Dad told me how the Gestapo would visit the camp sometimes
and at night the Gestapo officers would come into the prisoner barracks
and kick them while they slept. He said the Germans called
the
American
airmen “Luftgangsters” or “air
gangsters”, but thought this had a lot to do
with the .45 caliber semi-auto pistols the airmen wore in vests
equipped
with holsters
under their arms. Those guns were one of
the perks for being an airman (in other branches, only the officers
received
such weapons); slightly better pay and the comparatively rapid
advancement in
rank were other benefits of being an airman at the time. The
airmen
always disposed of their pistols if capture was imminent to avoid being
shot as an armed combatant. Some
would pitch
them as they floated down in their parachutes and some would bury them
upon landing. Sometimes
the airmen were
called "Terror-fleigers" or "terror fliers" or just plain "Swine" or
"Swine-hundt". The last one is my personal favorite; it means
"pig-dog". I have a December 10, 2002 interview transcript of Charles
Diedling, a former 460th airman who was shot down on August 7, 1944
during a raid to Blechhammer oil refinery. Charles was captured and
spent the balance of the war at Stalag IV until it was evacuated and he
was forced to march on the Death March described in the previous
section. Charles recalled being called "Kinder Killers" as
they went through various towns. Growing up, I remember my dad
using a bit of German
at
times. When he needed us to hurry he would say "Schnell!" ("Hurry!")
and when we
had to get out of bed or out of the house he would order "Raus!"
("Out!"),
orders often shouted by the German guards.

The prisoners had nicknames for guards as well. Guards were
referred to as "Goons" by the prisoners. The prisoners explained to
their German captors that "Goon" stood for "German Officer Or
Non-commissioned". Really, it just meant they were goons. The
prisoners took great delight when the guards would refer to themselves
as
goons. Prisoners were put on watch in front of barracks
when escape plans were being discussed and when
prisoners
were listening to their hidden radio for updates on the war progress.
When a guard would approach, the prisoner on watch would issue the
alert
"Goon Up!". By the end of the war the prisoners had two secret radios
in the camp as well as
a telegraph key and a camera. Prison guards who were assigned the task
of searching
for
escape tunnels or crawling under the barracks to eavesdrop on the
prisoners were called "Ferrets". They were on the constant search for
contraband items, especially the radio sets, which they knew existed
based on the knowledge the prisoners had about how the war was going.

In
regard to escape plans, there was an active escape committee that would
conceive,
evaluate, coordinate, and approve escape plans, even those
proposals that came from non-committee members prisoners. Hub Zemke
explains in his very informative book about his time
as the Senior Allied Officer at Stalag I entitled Zemke's Stalag - The
Final Days of World War II
that late in the war escapes
were generally
not proposed or attempted since all knew the end of the war was coming.
He also notes that while tunnels were common attempts at escaping, the
Germans usually found the tunnels. In fact, the Germans had
actually installed seismographic detectors to alert them of a tunneling
effort. However, Major August von Miller-Aichholtz, the head
of
Stalag I's Abwehr (military intelligence) and former Oberursel Dulag
Luft interrogator, would usually wait until the
tunnel
was significantly completed prior to taking action to expose it and its
builders. Von Miller lived and worked in Santa Barbara, California
before the war and claimed to still own a home there. He supposedly
lived in Vienna after the war until his death in 1969. Hub mentions
that one thought was that having the prisoners
expend such an effort prior to crushing their hopes was a tactic
designed to demoralize the prisoners. Hub also noted that
tunnels
were difficult prospects at Stalag I due to soil conditions and a very
high water table.

Tunnels were even more complicated by the fact
that once outside the outermost barbed wire fence, it was still
approximately 100 yards to the nearby woods. Being detected in the open
after exiting a tunnel was a real possibility and guards had
orders to shoot without question. However, there were very
creative attempts at alternative methods of escape. One prisoner had
himself wrapped in burlap to which numerous tin cans had been sewn. He
was placed in the refuse bin, carried outside the outer fences by
prisoners on a garbage detail, and dumped in the nearby trash heap. He
waited, still wrapped, until dark. Unfortunately a German
guard
happened to decide he needed a tin can for some reason and made his way
to the heap. He tried to pick up one of the cans that had been affixed
to the prisoner's disguise and the ruse was up.

Another group of
prisoners attempted escape by posing as a work detail being
led by
other prisoners disguised as German escorts. The party made it
as
far as the last gate, but all were discovered by an alert German guard
who showed no outside work details on his roster for that day.

Dad
once
said that after liberation somewhere he was given the largest
steak he had ever seen in his life. It
was
so huge in fact it didn't really even fit on his plate. I have read
that
a
Russian Colonel had his men herd into the Stalag a bunch of dairy cows
they
had
confiscated from the local farmers and shot them all with a machine
gun. Airman Art Starratt of the 8th Army Air Force described in his
memoirs the almost comical scene he observed. He indicated that some
prisoners were bent on milking the cows while others were actually
attempting to kill and then butcher the animals. Eventually the
prisoners did butcher the
cows and had a great feast of beef and confiscated schnapps, so maybe
that's where
dad got that big
steak, but I seem to
recall him saying it was given to him elsewhere, maybe by the Red
Cross. Wherever he got that steak, he never forgot about it in contrast
to the starvation months of late winter 1944/45 when enlisted men and
officers alike fought over potato peels from the garbage, were forced
by starvation to eat cats, and licked
their empty metal bowls in search of just a taste of a meal long
gone.One
source reports that the
German food ration until October 1, 1944 provided from 1,200
to
1,800 calories daily per man and would be augmented by Red
Cross
packages. The German ration was gradually cut to
800 calories per day. In September, October, and November of 1944, Red
Cross supplies became so low that they too were reduced and
the prisoners were put on half-parcels each week. A Red Cross
shipment was
received in November and the prisoners were then able to draw the
normal parcel each week during December in addition to a special
Christmas parcel. In January 1945 the parcel supply again reduced and
the men received a meager half parcel per week. Lt. Col. Greenings
February
26, 1945 Special Order to his compound informs the men that breakfast
is discontinued until further notice, only dinner of German soup ("no
potatoes") will be served, Red Cross parcels will run out Sunday and no
more are expected, coal rations are reduced another 20%, water may be
turned off at any time and a reserve should be maintained, and there
will be no lights for an indefinite period, possibly the duration of
the war. That same order also requests that the men stop
taking
garbage from the mess hall garbage cans and that personnel who received
bones from the mess hall for the purposes of making soup will return
the bones for reuse even though they had already been cooked twice.
An additional instruction on the order is passed to the POWs
from
the German command and warns the prisoners that "Any prisoner of war
found outside his barracks or looking out of windows during an Air Raid
will be fired upon without warning".

Sam
Hamilton indicated in a 1985 VFW newsletter, that at one point rations
had been cut to 1,100 calories per day and that prior to capture the
soldiers were receiving 3,300 calories per day. He
indicates
that often the meal was a "soupy substance concocted of
cabbage
and potatoes and other unidentifiable ingredients, and this culinary
masterpiece was wormy".

Another source indicates that from March 3, 1945,
until the last of the month, no parcels were distributed at all, and
German rations were reduced to an extent that toward the end
of
the
month men became so weak that many would fall down while attempting to
rise from their bunks or drop to the ground while in
formation.
American "MPs" were placed around garbage
cans to prevent the starving prisoners from eating out of the cans.
A Special Order from Lt. Col. Greening dated March 31, 1945 would
indicate that by late March things may have improved somewhat, although
coal was still in shortage, as breakfast is then noted as "American
cereal" and dinner was noted as fried Spam (1/4 [slice? can?]
per
man), mashed potatoes, cole slaw, and gravy. This meal may
have
been from a Red Cross shipment that one source reports as having been
received "about April 1, 1945". That shipment
was received from Lubeck
via Sweden and from that time until the evacuation of the camp the men
obtained sufficient nourishment. Zemke indicates in his book that Red
Cross parcels were received March 26th. Until
this starvation
period, the
normal daily menu would consist of about six potatoes, one-fifth of a
loaf of bread, margarine, marmalade, a small piece of meat (usually
horsemeat), two vegetables (cabbage, parsnips, beets, or turnips) tea
and coffee, and some amount of sugar. In addition, a thin barley soup
was frequently served. [source: http://www.b24.net/pow/stalag1.htm]Vietor
noted in his excellent memoir of his time spent at Stalag I that many
of the barracks had cats as pets. The cat in his
barracks had kittens during the hard winter months of starvation and he
and his barracks mates raffled off the kittens. The raffle was
apparently rigged so that Vietor's barracks would win one
kitten. The kittens were fattened on scraps and later eaten.
The
cat in Vietor's room was originally named "Joe", but its name was later
changed to something more ominous of its intended fate - "Stew". Vietor
points out that much talk went into how a small cat could be equally
divided into eight portions, but for Vietor and his mates it was a moot
discussion because their cat was stolen one night, its head bashed in
by prisoners in an adjoining room, its more meaty portions rapidly
cooked, and eaten. Vietor
indicates
that the smell of burnt cat fur pervaded many a barrack for quite some
time as other cats suffered the same demise. An
order was issued
by the ranking Allied officer, Col. Zemke, banning the eating of cats,
but it didn't matter - all the cats were
long gone, not one to be found in all the camp. With the loss of the
cats, the rat population flourished. To Vietor's
knowledge, however, no
one resorted to eating rats, but had the starvation continued, who
knows to what
depths the prisoners and others may have descended. March
1945
of
that cold winter, one of the coldest on record, was called "Hungry
March" by the prisoners, but guards and
civilians in town went hungry too. The Germans citizens ate cats as
well and began referring to them as "Dachhasen", German for "roof
rabbits" or "roof hares". Skinned and presented without head, feet, and
tail, a cat and an hare are very similar.

We
always had a cat growing up and I still do. I remember as a
child
that dad use to tease us about wanting to eat our cat. He
would
say they ate them in the prison camp, but I never really put much faith
in that until I started this research. Dad use to briefly
hold
the cat up by the tail and say all you needed to do was give them a
chop on the back of the neck. The cat didn't know what to think about
that and neither did I.

Cats
weren't the only animal eaten in a POW camp. Former POW Vincent
Lisanti told an interesting story in an October 24, 2016 video-recorded
oral interview about his time in the 460th Bomb Group. He was a
pilot of a B-24 and was shot down twice, lastly over Hungary on his
thirteenth mission. Using skills he learned becoming an Eagle
Scout, he evaded capture for four or five days, but was eventually
captured just outside a small village by a local policeman who held him
at shaky gunpoint. He was taken to Budapest for initial holding
and processing. He spent 13 months as a prisoner, first at Stalag
III in Sagan, Germany (now Żagań, Poland), the prison camp made famous
in the movie The Great Escape, and later at Stalag VII-A north of
Moosburg, Germany moved there because of advancing Russian
troops. While at Stalag VII-A he witnessed an interesting
event. Knowing that the Russian POWs endured tough conditions due
to the Germans' hatred of them, the American POWs would often toss some
contents of their Red Cross parcels over to the Russian who were kept
in a separate compound. Prunes were an item that were frequently
given away. The Russians made a high-octane liquor from the
prunes. I suspect that some of that liquor made its way back to
the British and American side. On one occasion the Russians got
especially drunk and a sort of riot ensued. Russians in one
barracks refused to come out when ordered. The Germans, trying to
resolve the situation without deadly force, sent in three huge German
Shepherds to roust out the Russians. There was a huge commotion
and then nothing. A short while later, three beautiful furry
pelts were tossed out the barrack's windows. It was not long
before the aroma of fried German Shepherd wafted across the compound.

Liberation

The war did progress, but even with such distractions
as guard-baiting and other efforts to
occupy time, it wore on the airmen and seemed only barely to
ebb
toward a
conclusion. The American prisoners learned of the passing of
their
President shortly after his death on April 12th via BBC broadcast
received on their secret radios. Even the British and
other prisoners felt the loss of the respected man and commiserated
with their allies. Many prisoners wore black armbands at the Appel the
morning to commemorate the loss of the President. The Germans saw the
armbands and inquired about their meaning and were told of the passing
of America's President. The Germans had not heard the news yet via the
Deutsch Rundfunk (German broadcasting station) and took this as further
confirmation that the prisoners had access to a radio communications.
Back at the 460th Bomb Group base in Spinazzola, Dick Schneider
indicates in his wartime memoirs that the death
did not come as a surprise. He noted that while they felt the loss,
they did not dwell on it. He says further that they had become
accustomed to death.

Towards the end of April 1945, however, prisoners and goons
alike could hear, first only at night when it was quiet, then both
night and day, the not so distant sound of Russian artillery shelling
the Germans. At night, the light from the cannons could be seen
flashing in the
east. By early April air raids were frequent, sometimes several during
the day and night. The hidden radio in one barracks and the reports
from the broadcasts that were shared throughout the camp generally kept
the prisoners apprised of war developments. Everyone at the prison
camp knew it would
not be long
now and an anticipation, thick and tangible, was felt throughout the
camp by prisoners and guards alike. A common saying was on the lips of
the prisoners - "Home alive in '45".

The
uneasiness began to become more apparent in the faces and actions of
the Germans. Zemke writes that on one occasion he was actually
approached by an Abwehr officer Hauptman (Captain) Rath. The Abwehr was
the
intelligence branch of the German military and, as compared to
the
other German soldiers at a stalag, were generally the most severe and
most aligned with the Nazi doctrine. In the stalags the Abwehr
conducted searches and served as the ferrets who eavesdropped on the
prisoners in hope of overhearing escape plans and military
intelligence. The Abwehr at Stalag I also monitored the seismographic
instruments monitoring for tunneling activities. Hauptmann Rath
intercepted Zemke in his rounds and attempted to strike a deal with
him. Hauptmann offered to personally take Zemke to the Allied front
lines provided that once there, Rath would then become Zemke's prisoner
and that Zemke would ensure that Rath was turned over to the United
States authorities. As a show of good faith, Rath removed his pistol
from his holster and gave it to Zemke. Zemke had no intention of
leaving the camp with the almost certain knowledge that liberation was
imminent, so he declined Rath's offer and returned his pistol saying
Rath's offer was too late and that Rath might need the gun himself.

A
diary kept by 2nd Lt. Norman Arthur Edward Quast details the changes
taking place in and around the camp as the Russians advanced. He talks
about one interesting visitor on April 3, 1945. Max Schmeling, the
great German champion heavyweight
boxer, who had at one time defeated Joe Louis by knockout, paid a
goodwill visit to the Stalag. I've seen other
former prisoner accounts which indicate that Max also visited the
Stalag in March 1945 and introduced the boxers in a prisoner of war
boxing match. Max had served as a German
paratrooper in the war until he was wounded and was now a sort
of public relations ambassador for the Germans. Max was never a Nazi
and, in fact, in 1989 it was learned that he had actually
worked to get Jewish children out of Germany. Max and Joe Louis
both served their respective countries, ultimately serving roles in
support of troop morale. They remained friends for the rest of their
lives. Max even paid the funeral
costs of the nearly destitute Joe Louis. Max lived a long life, passing
away on February 2, 2005, a multi-millionaire. When Max arrived at
Stalag
I,
many prisoners visited
with him and received autographs. Some prisoners were told not to pay
him any attention, he was a German after all and his visit was viewed
by some as a propaganda stunt, perhaps designed to garner goodwill now
that the Germans knew the end was near. Airman Clint Gruber
remembered that Max was
accompanied by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring who at one time had been
in charge of German forces in Italy. Evidently, Max and the Field
Marshal were very cordial, answered questions about the Joe Louis fight
and even about Germany's recent poor performance in the war. I remember
dad saying he had met Max and that Max had the biggest hands he had
ever seen.

My
research indicates one additional reason Max Schmeling may have visited
Stalag I. In 1961, Max, then a successful Coca-Cola
distributor
in Hamburg, was interviewed by newspaper writer Bill McCormick for a
two article series that ran in the Victoria (Texas) Advocate on
Tuesday, January 10, 1961, page 10 and January 12, 1961, page 20 to
address negativity towards him by some people believing he had been a
Nazi. Max wanted to set the record straight. During
the
interview as demonstration of some of his good deeds during the war he
told of a visit to a Stalag near Berlin where he made friends with
Colonel Delmar Spivey. He received permission for Spivey and two other
American officers to have dinner with him in Berlin, provided they were
returned to camp that evening, which they later were.

During the evening which
included dinner and drinks, Max shared information
with the
Americans,
briefing
them on war news
and location of Allied and Axis troops. He
explained he was doing this so that the
prisoners would know
which way
to go if they were freed or escaped. Col. Spivey informed Max
that
at another Stalag, Stalag I near Barth,
there was an American Colonel,
Colonel Henry Russell Spicer, being held and who was sentenced
to death
for
anti-German speeches. Hub Zemke noted in his novel that Spicer was a
bit of a rabble-rouser in the camp and was indeed known for his hatred
of Germans and his inflammatory speeches to his men. He was a
flamboyant character and against regulations wore a bushy moustache
like those sported by the British. His speeches were
generally slandering and insulting to the Germans and were often
intentionally delivered within earshot of German guards and Stalag
officers. His anti-German speeches had gotten him tried by the Germans,
sentenced to death pending an execution date for the charges of
inciting a riot and mutiny. Except for the few days of his trial and
the travel to and from the trial venue in a nearby town he had been in
solitary confinement since the end of October 1944. As for his
twenty minute trial, he was not allowed to call any witnesses, had no
other Americans or Allied representatives present, had not been allowed
to contact any neutral representatives, and was only provided a five
minute briefing with his German defense attorney immediately prior to
the start of his trial. He indicated his legal representative appeared
to have no prior knowledge of the case about to be heard. He noted in
an interview later that his verdict was read from a typewritten sheet
of paper that he felt had been prepared in advance of the trial.

Col.
Spivey asked if Max could help in any
way. Max agreed and later visited Stalag I. During
his
visit, Max asked permission to see Col. Spicer. He assured Spicer that
the next day his death sentence would be lifted. As a result of Max
Schmeling's visit, Spicer was not executed, but was kept in solitary
confinement in a 6 feet by 8 feet cell for six months until the Germans
fled the camp. For three of those months he was denied Red
Cross
parcels.

During
the McCormick interview, Max produced a letter from a Munich
businessman who had known Col. Spivey later in life after Spivey had
become a General and the Superintendent of Culver Military Academy in
Indiana. The businessman, who had visited Spivey in America,
confirmed Max's story and his role in helping to save Spicer's life.
Reporter McCormick was able to verify Max's claims and presented his
findings in the second part of his two part series.

The
morning after the Germans left the camp, some of Spicer's friends went
to get him out of his cell. They opened the door, found him asleep and
entirely unaware of what had transpired in the camp. They let him know
he was free and that the Germans were gone. He let them know that that
was indeed good news, told them to leave the door unlocked, and went
back to sleep. Spicer and Spivey both ended their careers as Generals.

The
prisoners heard of Dictator Benito Mussolini's, Il Duce's, capture and
execution on April 28t, 1945. His body had been hung upside
down
outside a gas station for all to witness. Before long the crowd began
to abuse his corpse, repeatedly dropping the body on its head. The Axis
was foundering and the end was eminent.

Quast also recorded in his diary increased activity by the Germans at
the Flak school,
more aircraft seen flying near and above the camp, and even an April 27
- 29 visit by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the German SS, and his
staff. Even so, scheduled events continued in the camp. For example,
during the week of April 21 - 28 he cites a birthday party for one of
his friends, a football throwing contest, and a craft exhibit being
held. On the 20th he notes he was awakened by an artillery barrage and
experienced air raids during the day. Things were falling apart
quickly.
Dad’s
written account of that last mission and the time as a
prisoner-of-war is brief, but chilling.
I have his
dress uniform jacket in my closet and it bears a Russian
star,
a red-lacquered pin with a sickle and hammer, like the
one to the left, that dad
said a Russian
Colonel
gave him. Why? I can only speculate from
the hint he provides in his writings about time spent with the Russians
hunting down German guards and "rectifying justice". The
2nd White Russian Front of the Red Army liberated the prison camp on
May 1, 1945, but the German
guards had fled around midnight the night
before. Bob Seidel indicated that before the Germans left, a German
sergeant came into his barracks and gave the men a white canvas bag
full of the prisoners' high school and Air Corp class rings that had
been taken away from them. He wanted to make sure they were
returned to the prisoners. Bob says all the rings were returned to
their rightful owners, even his own, which he was glad to have back.

Commandant Oberst Von Warnstedt had previously met with
ranking
Allied officer Col. Hubert "Hub" Zemke and informed him that the camp
was
going to be
abandoned in advance of the Russian arrival and that all the prisoners
were going to be marched 150 miles to a location near
Hamburg. Zemke objected but took the proposition to his leaders.
He allowed a vote - march or refuse to go. Zemke returned to the
Commandant and let him know the outcome, they would not go. He informed
the commandant that the
prisoners had
a secret commando unit, that they could storm his guards and take
over the
camp by force, and that the prisoners far outnumbered the German
guards and there would be unnecessary bloodshed on both
sides. Vietor's published memoirs confirm this as well. Vietor
indicates
that the prisoners had fashioned a sort of Molotov cocktail out of
benzene obtained by barter with the guards and that the prisoners also
had several heavy iron bars they could use as weapons, as well as an
ample supply
of rocks. Zemke indicates in his own book that in addition to a supply
of Molotov cocktails, some prisoners had brass knuckles, clubs, and
knives as well. Zemke was able to convince the Commandant that leaving
the
prisoners behind would be the best alternative this late in the war.
Bob Seidel summed it up more concisely. He said "Zemke said we weren't
going, and we didn't". In the days before the German abandonment of the
stalag, the prisoners were allowed to dig foxholes for protection from
the approaching active war zone. The wartime diary of 2nd Lt. Norman
Arthur Edward Quast confirms this as well. Lt. Quast indicated that the
date was April 30, 1945. The day before the Germans left the
stalag, Colonel Von Warnstedt met with Hub Zemke and informed him of
the
German's plans to abandon the camp that evening. The Colonel wanted
assurances that
the Germans could leave without any sort of confrontation. Hub assured
the colonel that no sort of demonstration or hindrance would take
place. Hub, who spoke German, cites Colonel Von Warnstedt as beginning
this
conversation with the following words "Der Krieg ist jetzt über
für
uns", which means "The war is over for us now". The German
personnel and guards turned
off the
camp's perimeter and
street lights around 10:00 PM on April 30, 1945 and were observed
exiting the camp, leaving gates unlocked behind them. Interesting to
note is that the Germans killed all their guard dogs before they left.
Hearing the
sounds of the exiting Germans, some of the prisoners realized what was
happening, but most of
them found out the next morning at Appell that the stalag had been abandoned
by the Germans during the night.

The prisoners first put up a white flag and later an
American flag, some say a British flag flew as
well. Pandemonium
was breaking out in Barth because
the
Russians were coming. News of the Russian presence and the death of
Hitler the day before was heard on a radio the Germans had left behind
and on the
subsequent announcement by fellow prisoners over the stalag's PA
system. The situation was changing quickly and frequently now. The
German fear of the approaching Russians was palpable. One crew member
recalls finding the
bodies
of a grandmother, young mother, her infant, and another woman
not
far
from the camp. They found out later the group of them were not locals
but had been staying at the local hotel since their house had been
destroyed. The grandmother was a rabid Nazi and took the lead
in
the murder/suicide pact. They would rather be dead instead of risking
their fates at
the hands of the Russians. There were many such suicides as
the
Russians approached. The Mayor of Barth shot himself (Zemke mentions
the Barth Burgermeister as having poisoned himself and his family) as
it was common
knowledge that municipal leaders were frequently executed by
the
Russians. Col. Zemke first ordered at risk of court martial, then later
merely urged, all prisoners to stay in camp after the Germans
fled so
that the Americans
would not be in danger roaming the countryside in an active war
zone. You
see, for those prisoners and all the rest, the war was not really over
at all. They were still soldiers and the Germans had not surrendered
yet.

Dad said the Russians, and the Mongols
who
travelled
with
them, were a rough lot and that they could be extremely brutal. One
American soldier was supposedly killed by a Mongolian soldier
in
a dispute over a cigarette lighter. One source indicates that Russians
would point their guns at a prisoner's wristwatch and the prisoner
would simply hand it over. Other sources indicate that there was active
bartering ongoing between the Americans and their liberators. Both
sorts of exchanges certainly occurred. Airman Art Starratt's memoirs
state that at least ten Americans were killed by the Russians as a
result of arguments and fights.

Dad
and John Bills, after Liberation at Stalag I, Barth, Germany

The town of Barth was officially surrendered on May 1st or 2nd, 1945 to
the Russians and the surrender was witnessed by American and British
officers.

The
following two
images are of the Barth Hard Times newspaper a couple of the prisoners
issued on May 5, 1945 after liberation and prior to their departure
from the camp. One source indicates this was actually printed at a
press in Barth, not at the prison camp. Another source indicates the
actual printing was done by the Russians for the newly freed
prisoners. I have not personally verified
where or by whom it was printed. For the cost of one candy bar, it
provided a good summary of the prisoners'
liberation,
early communications with the Russians, and what was going on in Barth
and with the townspeople as the Russians approached and eventually
took control.

A
Newspaper Issued
by the Prisoners at Liberation
(click on images for full-size picture)

Back
home, an equally exuberant, and entirely unverified, article was
printed on May 10, 1945 in The Globe Gazette, Mason City, Cerro Gordo
Co., IA and gives an entirely different spin on the post-liberation
activities at Stalag I as compared to the Bard Hard Times article which
indicates prisoners were given a "stay put" order. The Globe
Gazette article, by International New Service correspondent and freed
Stalag I prisoner Lowell Bennett, indicates some Mason City hometown
soldiers were liberated from Stalag I and that in 12 hours time the
9,000 freed prisoners took control of over 200 square miles of German
territory, including several towns and an "important airfield", and
captured 2,000 Germans. These are just some of the
accomplishments cited in the article. I've not found any
similar
information substantiating this report.

I've read a couple of amusing stories about the Russians and their
arrival at the camp. One of the early arrivals on May 1st was a drunken
Russian on a white farm horse. He claimed he was a Russian colonel. He
was offended that the
prisoners
weren't
more exuberant at their soon to be realized liberation by the Russians.
He didn't think the prisoners were grateful enough to the Russians. He
thought that the prisoners would burn the camp down in celebration of
the arrival of the Russians. Col. Zemke had the prisoners burn
one
guard tower. He also ordered the barbed wire torn down and the
prisoners
complied with that wish as well. That seemed to
make the Russian happy, but the encounter became tense when the Russian
shot his long-barreled pistol into the air and Zemke tried to quiet him
down. The Russian put the pistol against Zemke's head and
cocked
the hammer. Fortunately, the drunken Russian did not fire, possibly due
to the reaction of the prisoners in the camp's yard - they went crazy. Days
later it was
found out that the Russian on horseback was just a drunken
ex-prisoner who
had
been
held by the Germans and recently liberated. He had pieced
together a uniform and
stolen a horse and wondered into camp claiming to be a Colonel. This
episode was reported to the Russians who were then on the lookout for
the rogue imposter.

Hub himself tells the above story somewhat differently in his own
book. He indicates that the Russian was extremely drunk, was travelling
with another Russian soldier and a woman who appeared to be one of
their girlfriends. The Russians were admitted into the camp after
demanding entrance (I am sure Hub gave the Allied guard heck for
that). One was taken to see Hub in his office, the abandoned
German administrative offices. There the drunken Russian soldier waived
his gun and threatened Hub and others. Hub and some of his officers
offered to let the Russian declare the prisoners liberated in a ploy to
diffuse the situation. In the meanwhile, Hub also had some men
secretly get a blanket. Outside after "liberating" the prisoners, the
drunk Russians were captured and tossed in the air over and over using
the blanket. All three became violently ill, were subdued, disarmed,
and placed in the cooler, the stalag's jail cell, until
sober. Hub indicates that the soldier
was in fact a Russian Major. All three were turned over to the
Russians. Hub later met with the Senior Russian officer, Colonel
Zhovanik (Hub had already met with him in and around Barth and had
enjoyed a drunken feast with him in a German household the Russian
Colonel commandeered) and
explained what happened with the drunken Russian soldiers. Colonel
Zhovanik wondered why Zemke had not simply shot the drunken
Russians. Hub also indicates that the evening prior to the
abandonment of the camp by the Germans, bribes were made that allowed
three groups of two prisoners each to exit the camp. Each had a
separate but similar mission - to make contact with the US, British,
and Russian forces. Hub indicates that this is how first contact was
made with the Russians and that the first Russian brought back to the
stalag was a Russian lieutenant.

Another
good story
is how the Russians liked to
drink with the Americans. A typical toast by the Russians would be to
"Stalin! Roosevelt! and Studebaker!" It turns out the
Russians
were crazy about Studebaker jeeps. Go figure. Shouts by the
Russians of "Amerikanski Free!" or "Tovarich!" (meaning "friend" in
Russian) resounded throughout the camp early on.
On May 7th the Russians even put on a dance program for the prisoners
featuring a
genuine Russian dance troupe (complete with beautiful Russian women,
not
the Russian women soldiers they had with them). Some sources indicate
that the troupe travelled with the Russian army, others indicate it was
essentially the Russian equivalent to the USO. I've wondered if this
troupe was part of the famous Alexandrov Ensemble of the Red Army that
stills performs today.

The
Russians
hosted a dance show for the newly liberated prisoners,
complete with a Russian dance troupe!

I bet those pretty Russian girls
drove the soldiers wild. Unlike these dancers, the Russian soldier
women were
described as not much different looking than the men, even rougher
sometimes. The Russians must have been an interesting
lot. I've
read stories of this 2nd White Russian Front and it seems that not only
a dance troupe traveled with them, but some of the soldiers had their
entire families with them. Lots of other "hangers-on" from
various
nationalities trailed
them
as well.

I've read terrible things about the Russians who arrived in Barth,
as well as the
Serbians, Mongolians, and Ukrainians who traveled with them.
One
author talks about the
many murders, rapes, and other crimes that took place in and around
Barth once the
Russian forces moved in. German women and children began to appear at
the stalag and
begged to be allowed to stay so that they could be safer from
the
Russians. There are accounts of German fathers having American
soldiers stay in their houses with their daughters so that the Russians
would hopefully leave them all alone. One guard actually shot himself
in the head as he was distraught over what the Russians may have done
to his
wife whom he had not heard from for several
months. Ironically,
two days after he killed himself a package arrived for him
containing 56
letters from her. Evidently she was alive and well and her letters were
delayed due to the war and bureaucracy.

Eventually, all
the barbed wire fences and gates were knocked down making it
difficult to contain
the now free Allied soldiers. Some
prisoners
ventured into Barth and the outlying areas and returned with food,
rabbits, sheep, liquor, and everything else they could get their hands
on. I read one account of a prisoner having had so much to
drink
in Barth that his fellow prisoners had to carry him back on a window
shutter. I read one sad story of excess involving three American
prisoners who also had too much to drink in Barth and wrecked the jeep
they
were driving, killing
all three of them. What a tragic, wasteful loss. To survive
being shot down, captured, imprisoned, exposed to all sorts of
hardship, and then
to be
freed, only to
die senselessly like that. Another sad loss is the death of a freed
prisoner who was wandering around the grounds near the stalag when he
stepped on a mine. Prison
rules had prohibited the storage of the Red Cross parcels at the stalag
itself, so they were stored at the Flak school. Hub had ordered that
the storage area be guarded. He and a couple pals went to the flak
school to explore. During their visit Hub saw about 50 German civilians
attempting to break into the parcel storage area. He had one of his men
run back to the stalag and get help. The civilians, the leader of who
Hub thought he recognized as a former guard, had managed to enter the
storage area by this time and many were in to process of walking off
with parcels. Hub's armed men arrived and fired shots into the air.
Many of the civilians dropped their parcels and all fled. Later, the
former prisoners to whom the responsibility of guarding the storage
area were severely reprimanded by Hub. Many of the parcels were quickly loaded and
distributed
to the prisoners, the rest were guarded until
evacuation. 45,000
parcels remained by the time the POWs were evacuated and were
turned over to the Russians.
Red Cross parcels weren't the only sustenance by this time. Some of the liberated prisoners
found
crates of good liquor at
the
shipping yards and brought bottles back for their friends in
camp. Prisoners celebrated their new freedom in various other
ways
too.
One way was
especially unusual. John Bills recalled in
his
memoirs that one guy he knew and had at times talked to him about
escaping, a pilot named Bob Hoover, left camp and
went to the Luftwaffe's flak training school immediately adjacent to
the prison
camp. Hoover found a German fighter plane, a Focke Wulf of some
sort,
probably an FW-190 (there is a post-liberation picture of an FW-190
there), and was last seen taking off in it, heading toward
friendly lines. Bob
Hoover
did what he knew how to do - he just flew away and left that camp
behind him, eventually landing in Holland. Bob Hoover later wrote an
autobiography entitled Forever
Flying about
his time at Stalag I and his career afterwards as a test pilot, a
colleague of
Chuck Yeager. Bob's autobiography verifies that it was in
fact an
FW-190 that he flew away in. Bob, however, leads the reader to
believe that he actually escaped from the Germans and is silent on
actual dates. After much searching I did finally find one interview
transcript in which Bob admits the Germans had already
abandoned
the
camp. In it Bob indicates, "People made it sound like a great escape,
but the
guards had deserted us".
Subsequent to finding the interview transcript, John Bills, III
provided me a copy of a November 25, 1945
newspaper article detailing Bob's flight from the airfield after
liberation.
I think
Bob's
autobiography continues to add
to
the myth of the great escape, but even so, it was a great way to leave
regardless of who was actually in control of the camp. Hoover wasn't
the only prisoner who went on to earn a name for themselves. The actor
Donald Pleasence, an RAF navigator, was imprisoned at Stalag I, and so
was Bernard Leon Barker, one of the Watergate burglars. Bob was not
alone in those who departed the camp early and in unusual ways. Four
other
soldiers loaded a small two-cylinder car with
Red Cross parcels, pasted a sign to the window that said in Russian
"Press - Pass Freely" and began a 400 mile drive toward what they hoped
would be freedom. Sadly, some prisoners just walked away
toward
friendly
lines and were never heard from again, forever lost in the final,
desperate chaos and death spasms of a dying war.

The
collapse of the once mighty German war machine came like dominos
falling. On April 29th German forces remaining in Italy surrendered. The
prisoners heard of Hitler's suicide on April 30th. He had married Eva
Braun after midnight in the wee hours of April 29th. They honeymooned
in a bomb shelter and celebrated their marriage with a breakfast on the
morning of April 29th. They were married for about 40 hours
before
they committed suicide, Eva by cyanide capsule, Hitler by
gunshot
to the right side of his head. Hitler was true to his word, he had
given
the people a new Germany they would not recognize. Grand
Admiral
Karl Dönitz
succeeded Hitler as Head of State. Berlin
was surrendered on May 2nd, to be followed quickly thereafter on May
4th with the surrenders of German forces in Northwest Germany,
Denmark, Netherlands, and Bavaria. May 6th brought the
personal
surrender of Hermann Göring
himself and all of Breslau. Göring
stood trial at Nuremburg and was sentenced to be hanged like a common
criminal. He had wanted to be shot by a firing squad. On October 14,
1946, on the eve of his hanging, he committed suicide in his cell by
biting a cyanide capsule instead.
On
May 7th, General Alfred Jodl did his best to negotiate terms of the
official surrender in Reims, northwestern France. He hoped for a
surrender to Eisenhower that entailed the cessation of war between
Germany and the Allied forces, but allowing Germany
to continue
to war with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower indicated that the surrender
was to be complete and unconditional, that if that were not the case,
Eisenhower would order the sealing off of German retreats in the face
of advancing Russians, leaving the fate of Germans solely to the
Russians, a certain death for remaining German forces. Jodl contacted Dönitz
who authorized the complete surrender. Jodl followed those instructions
at 2:41 AM. The war in Europe was over. The official end of the war was
agreed upon as 11:01 PM on May 8th. Some German forces were stragglers
and surrendered a few day later. By this time Himmler had assumed a
false identity and disguised himself as a "Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger"
complete with an eye patch. He was captured at a checkpoint on May 11th
by former Soviet prisoners of war who, not knowing who he was, turned
him over to the British. Under British charge, Himmler divulged his
true identity and shortly thereafter committed suicide by biting on a
cyanide capsule. It seems there was no shortage of cyanide in Germany
at the end.

Like Göring, Dönitz
and Jodl stood trial at Nuremburg for their actions during the war.
Jodl was hanged on October 16, 1945. He was pardoned
posthumously
in February 1953, but the pardon was reversed later in September that
same year. Karl Dönitz
received ten years in prison. After his release he remained unrepentant
of any actions during the war and wrote two books. He died of natural
causes on December
24, 1980 and passed into history.

A
Returning

As for the
former
prisoners of Stalag I, now soldiers again, well, they eventually were
gathered up
and transported home at different times and through different
routes. Dad turned 21 years old in the prison camp on May 9th.
His birthday present from Uncle Sam came three days later when on May
12, 1945 at 2:30 PM B-17 Flying Fortresses were spotted
overhead, circling the airfield adjacent to the stalag. Those
old
warbirds had been stripped of their armament
and would be the start of the way home for the prisoners as part of
Operation Revival - the evacuation of Allied prisoners from the camp
and their return to Allied control. The
British prisoners were evacuated that first day because for the most
part they had all
been
prisoners the longest. The next day, 6,250 American ex-prisoners
were flown out in those B-17s that landed continuously, one to two
minutes
apart. Each B-17 could evacuate only 30 former prisoners; even so, the
Stalag was fully evacuated by May 15, 1945. There was always a rivalry
between crews of the B-24 Liberators and the B-17 Flying Fortresses,
each side believing their aircraft was better designed, better
performing, or generally more capable of performing its intended
duties, but I'll bet dad didn't mind one bit climbing aboard a 91st
Bomb Group, 8th Army Air Force B-17 to
begin his journey home.

B-17s at
Barth Evacuate Prisoners

Dad's
route back was
via
B-17 transport from the airfield adjacent to Stalag I (once it
was
cleared of mines and booby traps the Germans left behind), through an
evacuation route or
corridor agreed upon
with the Russians through Russian-controlled northeastern German
airspace over the towns of Ruhl and Rhineland, to an airfield in
Rhiems, France, then by truck or train (Bob Seidel indicates
it
was by "4-by-4s" to Camp Lucky Strike at
St.
Vallerie, close to Le Havre. Camp Lucky
Strike was one of many staging area camps officially called Recovered
Military Allied Personnel or RAMP camps and generally referred to as
"Cigarette Camps", so called because they were named after American
cigarette brands. Other such camps were camps Old Gold, Herbert
Tareyton, Home Run, Chesterfield, Philip Morris, Pall Mall, Twenty
Grand, and Wings. The soldiers were assigned areas of the camp based on
their home state.

Allowing the Americans to evacuate their
personnel
in this manner had been agreed upon secretly just days before in
negotiations with the Russians on the Elbe River. As part of
that
agreement, the Americans turned over to the Russians a former Russian
soldier that the Germans had been holding and working with, Commander
Andrei Vlasov, who
had worked with the Germans after
his capture to train other captured Russians as a force that fought
against their former comrades to supposedly free Russia from Stalinism.
I grimace to think what happened to that fellow once he was in the
hands of his former countrymen.

Important
to note in this discussion of liberation of prisoners of war by Russian
forces is the Yalta Agreement with Russia which the United States
entered into on February 11, 1945. The British had entered
into a
separate similar agreement with Russia. All sides knew that
as
the end of the war approached forces advancing into Germany and
German-held territories would encounter prisoner of war
camps.
The agreement was entered into to ensure a systematic process was in
place prior to those encounters. The United States-Russia
agreement specified the terms that would be followed when United States
prisoners of war were liberated by Russian forces and
visa-versa.
Those terms provided that liberating forces would maintain prisoners of
war in camps or at other concentration points and immediately notify
the home governments that the prisoners of war had been discovered and
liberated, that representatives of the governments of the liberated
prisoners would have immediate access to the places where the freed
prisoners of war were held, that the liberating country would be
responsible for external protection of the camps with internal
administration under control of officials from the country of those
liberated, that the liberating country would provide adequate food,
clothing, shelter, and medical attention, and that each country could
use its own means to transport its prisoners of war.

In
practice, however, Russia was either unwilling or unable to follow the
terms of the agreement, which caused delays in repatriating liberated
prisoners of war and resulted in the need for further discussions,
concessions, and agreements such as the arrangement discussed
above. The United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA
Affairs during its 1991 to 1993 investigation noted that it
"found
evidence that some U.S. POWs were held in the former Soviet Union after
WW II, the Korean War and Cold War incidents" and that the Committee
"cannot, based on its investigation to date, rule out the possibility
that one or more U.S. POWs from past wars or incidents are still being
held somewhere within the borders of the former Soviet
Union".
Today, according to the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Accounting
Office, 73,515 American WWII servicemen remain unaccounted
for. Many of those were known prisoners of war.

The
unwillingness to cooperate in access to and transportation of
the
POWs in Russian-controlled airspace and territory later in the war is
somewhat in contrast to the early phases of joint operations
of
June through September 1944 during which Allied bombers were allowed to
use three bases in the Ukraine as part of Operation Frantic which
employed what was termed shuttle bombing to extend the range of allied
bombers flying out of England and southern Italy. Shuttle
bombing
was an operational approach to bombing runs that did not require the
bombers to return to their home bases after a mission, but provided for
continuing on to a closer participating base such as the Soviet bases
in the Ukraine. A subsequent mission from the Soviet base
would
then allow another mission to be completed on the return flight to the
home base. However, even this mutually beneficial operation
began
to sour sometime in August 1944 as the Soviets became much more
difficult to work with and even fired on some Allied aircraft.

In
any event, despite
the failed Yalta Agreement, the Stalag I prisoners arrived at Camp
Lucky Strike where the men were deloused, showered, had
their
hair cut, reissued clothing, had medical exams, were debriefed, and
readied for the trip
home. The men were, for the most part,
malnourished and care had to be taken in returning the men to
normal diets. Upon arrival at the camp they received a Surgeon's
Bulletin which was essentially a memo to the arriving former prisoners
of war. It told them of the physiological changes that had taken place
in their bodies as a result of having been on a starvation
diet consisting primarily of bread and watery soup for months.
It went into detail how their stomach lining changed, the shrinking of
their stomachs, and how many of their organs may not be functioning
properly yet, and how vitamin deficient they were, how their stomach
linings were inflamed, irritated, and delicate. They were instructed to
take only what the servers provided them in the mess hall and not to go
back for seconds. They were told not to eat candy, peanuts, doughnuts,
frankfurters, pork, rich gravies, liquor, and spicy
foods while
they adjusted to their new diets and their body and systems became
stronger. The memo indicates "It is up to you now to liberate
yourselves from your new enemy - your appetite and your digestive
system". Many followed the instructions and many did not. Many former
prisoners had stomach and digestive problems the rest of their lives.

There
was down time while they waited for their ship assignments home. Many
men visited the countryside and even made it to Paris and other cities.
Dad brought back to the US some French coins he picked up while at Camp
Lucky Strike.
Others had all sorts of souvenirs they had picked up during the war,
including German weapons, helmets, silver, art, watches, bayonets, and
many other things. Orders went out that all souvenirs that the soldiers
wished to take back home were to be inspected and approved. An
inspection was done and some items were disallowed due to their danger.
Of course, the inspection results depended on how forthcoming the
soldiers were with what they had collected, so many contraband items
made it to the US. Dad had picked up a German Luger somewhere are
brought it home and raffled it off at some time for extra cash.
He had a pull handle with a short length of wire cable that he said
came from a parachute pack. It was around the house in various
drawers for years before it disappeared at some point. He also
said he had a very nice German or Swiss watch, but that it got stolen
while he was showering either in Barth or Camp Lucky Strike. When
I was a kid, I remember seeing his old heavy leather and fleece flight
coat and pants. They had been hanging in the basement for years
and unfortunately were dry-rotted and crumbling, actually crispy to the
touch. In my research I ran across an amusing story about a ship
heading out from one of the cigarette camps and en route to the
US. At one point the Captain stopped the ship when an unexploded
mine was spotted. He ordered his crew to shoot the mine to
explode it. His crew shot at the mine but it would not explode.
The next thing the Captain knew was that there were scores of former
prisoners standing at the rails shooting at the mine with their
smuggled weapons alongside his crew. The mine never exploded, but it
did sink.

Finally dad received his orders home. On June 6, 1945 from Le Havre,
France (which came to be known as the "Gateway to America" because so
many US troops and former prisoners passed through there on their way
home), dad boarded his assigned ship for the voyage home. From Le Havre
it was on to New York's 86th Street pier aboard the transport ship USS
General J. R. Brooke, AP132. The USS General J. R. Brooke was a
troop transport ship and ultimately made 12 trips shuttling American
soldiers back from Europe. At almost 500 feet long and 72 feet
wide, it had the capacity to carry 3,28 passengers. Earlier in
the war it braved the Atlantic to transport German prisoners to be held
in the United States.

Do you believe that some things that
happen are more than mere coincidence? I do, and here's one of them.
Our Weber ancestors, after having left Germany, stepped off a boat in
New York harbor on June 17, 1853. On June 17, 1945, my father, after
having left Germany, stepped off a boat there as well, exactly 92 years
later to the day.

An Accounting

While
all the rest of the former White L for Love crew returned to Allied
control and their lives afterwards, 1st Lt. Morris Caust was not
forgotten by his friends, crewmates, and the US Army Air Force. He had
been shot after safely landing by parachute near Lamprechtshausen,
Austria. He was unarmed and non-combative. His death was a war crime
and it was not long before the Nazi farmer and member of the Gau who
shot him was arrested, charged, and held for trial thanks to the
statements of his crewmates and the exemplary German record keeping.
Josef Hangöbl, shown
here on trial and under guard, was tried by
a
general
military court on
October 17th and 18th,
1945 at a courtroom established at the Dachau Concentration
Camp in Dachau, Germany for the killing of 1st Lt.
Morris Caust. Unlike the well-known Nuremberg trials which were
conducted by an international tribunal of Allied military personnel due
to the broad geographical range and scope of those crimes, the
war
crimes trials in the courtroom set up at the former Dachau
concentration camp were conducted
only by a US military tribunal which focused on the prosecution of
crimes committed within US zones in Germany and Austria and crimes
committed against US citizens and military personnel. While the trials
were already underway at Dachau, the arrangements for trials at
Nuremberg were being finalized with the selection of the international
military tribunal president on October 14th and the issuance of
indictments on October 19th, allowing the Nuremberg trials to
begin on November 20th.

Dachau had been
liberated by the 7th Army, 45th Infantry Division on April 29, 1945. In
all the court at Dachau issued 426 death sentences, 256 acquitals, 199
life sentences, 530 sentences of five years or less, and 261 sentences
from six to 50 years. 200 of the cases heard at Dachau involved 600
defendants and were referred to as "flyer cases" or cases
involving crimes against airmen.

Josef
Hangöbl was
officially
charged with Violations of the Laws of
War, in particular that he, "an enemy national, did, at or near
Lamprechtshausen, Austria, on or about 16 November 1944, willfully,
deliberately and wrongfully kill Morris Caust, a member of the United
States Army, who was then unarmed and in the act of surrendering, by
shooting him with a rifle". Josef Hangöbl had made at least three
official written statements by that time (June 2, 1945, June 3, 1945,
and October 5, 1945) and all essentially told the same story - that he
was approached by a young girl, found and shot the airman twice after
calling to Caust five times to raise his hands and getting no response,
and that he left Caust after shooting him to seek help.

The findings of the trial
were that Lt. Caust had not seen Josef Hangöbl or heard his calls
in
German to raise his hands. Lt. Caust was in the process of removing his
parachute harness when Josef's first shot hit near his elbow, passed
through, and lodged in his shoulder. That shot spun Lt. Caust around
and Josef's second shot hit him in the back and passed through his
abdominal area. The court concluded that Lt. Caust had not tried to run
away as indicated by Josef Hangöbl because Lt. Caust was found
where he
had landed, still on and unattached to his own parachute. The court
further concluded that after Josef left Caust, Josef was
not
seeking help but was leaving the area. They found his statement that he
did not approach Niedermuller in his field because he did not want to
interrupt his field work absurd. The prosecution in its closing
comments referred to Josef Hangöbl as "a hard-boiled little Nazi".
The
judge instructed the jury to disregard that comment.

German
records indicate Lt. Caust was shot because he hadn't raised his hands
"at once" and that he died in surgery at 10:00 PM the night of November
16, 1944. He was reported by the Germans as buried in Oberndorf
Cemetery, Field D, Row 602 on November 20, 1944 at 9:00 AM. The German
death report and death notification were signed by a Dr. Nezler.
Foreign soil would not be Morris's final resting place, though it would
take me a long time to positively confirm that, ultimately
with
the kind assistance of surviving Caust family members. The
"Life
Afterwards" chapter provides additional information about Morris Caust
and my search for his remains.

Interestingly,
although the evidence presented at the war crimes trial supported that
Lt. Caust did receive medical treatment, some crew members recalled
seeing his body at the farmhouse. It is possible that those crew
members did not actually speak with Caust and merely thought he had
died. Dad indicates in his 1945 written testimony he gave in Ohio as
part of the war crimes investigation that he did not see Morris's body,
but that he heard of Morris's death from Tex Mattiza who had seen the
body and felt Maury had been killed by the Germans after landing safely.

In light of the findings of the trial, the original charge was
slightly amended to reflect that Lt. Caust was not in the process of
surrendering because the court believed Caust was never aware of Josef
Hangöbl's presence and never heard his calls to raise his hands. Josef
Hangöbl was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard
labor. Two
jury members filed a petition for review of the sentence on the grounds
that the accused was a lawful belligerent and that he acted in
self-defense. While the self-defense argument may not have
resonated with the tribunal in its consideration of the review request
based on the facts, the status of Josef as a lawful
belligerent did. The sentence was
reduced to ten years with hard labor. The court recommended that Josef
Hangöbl serve out his ten year sentence at Zuchthaus und
Sicherungsanstalt Straubing (a prison and detention center in
Straubing, Germany). Many newspapers in the
United States followed the war crimes trials with keen interest and
I've found the announcement of Josef Hangöbl's
conviction in The Times Recorder, Zanesville Signal, on October 21,
1945 and other publications as well.

We
will never know why Josef shot Morris Caust. Did he do it because, as
he maintained, he thought Morris was reaching for a weapon? Did he do
it out of fright caused by this new situation he had been thrust into
without training? Did he set out on foot to take the life of
an
airman? Was it in anger and revenge for the continued bombings
and possible loss of friends, relatives, or countrymen? Did he do
it because he wanted his own piece of the war? Was it because
he
was in fact the "hard-boiled little Nazi" the prosecutor said
he was and
that is what such a Nazi might do? Had there been more
interaction
between Josef and Morris before the shooting and did Josef kill Morris
because he was a Jew
as the Caust family has believed these many years? We will never
know, we can't. I think it was an act born from a foul mixture of many
of
these reasons, a destructive brew of hate, anger, frustration, fear,
and ignorance. It was the war itself reduced to a micro scale at
the edge of a farmer's fallow field on a cold Austrian fall day.

Epilogue

In
addition to some other medals, decorations, and a unit citation that
dad received at different times, on September 4, 1945 he
received
a purple heart for his wounds received during battle on his last
mission. I kept that
purple heart on my bookshelf in my business office for many
years.
I
remember taking that to school for
show-and-tell when I was a kid in early elementary school. My
oldest son did the same years later and told his class about his
grandfather, the former prisoner-of-war.

Many
of
dad's original medals have gone to various family members over the
years, but I have
found replacements for the ones I did not have. I now have the purple
heart and the rest of his medals
displayed where
I can see them
every day in a shadow box, seen above, along
with
his various uniform insignias, patches, badges, and a small
B-24
Liberator I painted in his Bomb Group/Bomb Squad color
schematic. The 460th Bomb Group patch was donated to me by a kind
gentleman, Robert Farwell, who had been selling it online.
Robert
is the son of Richard D. "Diz" Farwell who served as copilot
on
the Arthur "Art" Gigax crew in the 460th BG, 760th BS. Diz
was
known as "Red" to his crew because of the color of his hair.
Once
Robert learned of my
father's role in the bomb group and my intended use for the patch, he
sent it to me without charge. Below
are
larger images of the medals.

For practical reasons, ribbons are typically worn on a uniform
instead of the heavy, full-size medals. Here are dad's ribbons
presented in the proper order of precedence. The three oak leaf
clusters
represent additional awards of the Air Medal and the three stars on the
EAME
medal represent the major campaigns in which dad participated, namely
the Balkans, Northern Apennines, and Rhineland campaigns.

In
some pictures, like the one at the top of this page, you can see scars
over dad’s left eye and
nose.
He received those on his last mission. He said that he also
took
shrapnel in his left leg
and that he had a plate in his head. I think he was kidding
about
the plate, but who knows? His
old uniform jacket also now bears a prisoner-of-war medal awarded to
him posthumously on November 26, 2003. I
had applied for
it on his behalf during April of that year. I think
that he would like that medal. In January 2010, on a bitterly cold
Sunday morning, a friend and I went to dad's gravesite at St.
Joseph’s Cemetery,
Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio. We swept deep snow from hundreds of
gravestones before we found my father's. There was no 21 gun salute
booming out sharp and clear on
that cold morning like there was years before at his military memorial
service where I now stood. Nor was there anyone there to hand my mother
a folded American flag like the soldier did on that windy day in April.
There were no taps playing in the background, drawing tears from our
eyes. This time, it
was quiet and peaceful and my footprints in the snow and the swept
gravestones were all that
showed that life still moved on in the world dad left behind.
My
friend and I had a toast to dad. Cold whiskey from a colder steel flask
in a lonely place. It stung my throat the way the cold wind stung my
face and brought tears of a different kind to the corners of my eyes.
My friend left me to my thoughts then and walked amongst the distant
stones, thinking his own thoughts. Strangely, mortality hangs
heavy in a cemetery, heavy as the stones that mark the graves of its
inhabitants. I told dad about his new medal and
placed it on his gravestone and had a long chat with him about it and
some other
things
too. I knelt and blessed myself and said a prayer. I saw that
someone had left a small artificial potted plant and an American flag
on either side of dad's gravestone. It made me glad to know that
someone else had been thinking about dad. I later found out that
they
had been left there by my half-brother, Rick, and his mother, Susan.
Bells tolled at the little chapel near dad's grave
and they reminded me that this desolate cemetery was not my place and
that the
time had come to leave this cold, snow-covered quiet place to the
resting
souls. So I left my father there again, like I had done
long ago. I told myself that next time it would not be so
terribly long. His father and his father before him are buried
there, so he rests easy amongst his ancestors.

War
Buddies UniteDad
and John Bills horsing
around about 1958 or 1959
when the Bills family came to visit the Webers

Dad never once mentioned this next fact to me or to anyone else that I
know of. I found this piece of information on his discharge
papers. Only recently have I come to know what an amazing and humble
man he was. My father was awarded a high honor by his country,
the
Distinguished Flying Cross. This medal
is awarded for
individual
achievement and is our nation's fourth highest-ranked medal awarded
for valor, surpassed in his branch of service only by the Medal of
Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Silver Star. A simple
Google search provides the
significance of this individual award, as quoted below.

Dad's
Distinguished
Flying Cross

"The
Distinguished Flying Cross is awarded to any person who, while serving
in any capacity with the Army of the United States, distinguished
himself or herself by heroism or extraordinary achievement while
participating in aerial flight. The performance of the act of heroism
must be evidenced by voluntary action above and beyond the call of
duty. The extraordinary achievement must have resulted in an
accomplishment so exceptional and outstanding as to clearly set the
individual apart from his or her comrades or from other persons in
similar circumstances. Awards will be made only to recognize single
acts of heroism or extraordinary achievement and will not be made in
recognition of sustained operational activities against an armed enemy."

In
late 2012 I sent a letter to the United
States National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO responsible
for military records retention in an attempt to learn more about the
circumstances for which dad's flying cross had been issued. Some weeks
later a nice gentleman called to discuss my records request and
informed
me the records had been lost in a fire on July 12th and 13th,
1973
which burnt a
significant portion of all WWII records maintained there. Our
government does many things very well. It especially exceeds at
letting our valuable records burn. As an amateur genealogist,
I
regret the loss of nearly the entire 1890 census due to another fire in
1921. To
date, the only
other crew members I have been able to verify as having received the
Distinguished Flying Cross are Sam Hamilton (per his 2015 Opp Hall of
Fame inductee summary), Clifford Stone, and John Murphy. Of
the several
medals dad was awarded the majority of them are classified as Medals of
Valor and include his Distinguished Flying Cross, Air, Bronze Star,
Purple Heart, and Prisoner-of-war medals. I think dad
would say he didn’t
deserve medals for "doing his job" or just for being a prisoner-of-war,
even though his
country
believes he does. That’s just the kind
of guys fellows from that generation were.
They had a job to do and they stepped up to do it halfway around the
world. They were boys, mostly aged 18
through 20, who willingly enlisted into a branch of the military that
experienced about a 50 percent mortality rate.
Their country required up to 50 missions of them, and not many could go
the
distance through no fault of their own. They
took their knocks and moved on, never expecting too much in the way of
reward
or recognition. The lucky ones returned to their homes, their
heads bloodied but unbowed.

Flier Returns to
United States

[Note:
An
undated article from the
Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. Note the incorrect information in
the
article, "... prisoner of the Germans until March, 1945"
should be
"... prisoner of the Germans until May, 1945". Additionally, his Air
Medal has three oak leaf clusters.]
The above article indicates that dad returned home on a ship with the
86th Blackhawk Division. My research indicates that the
Blackhawk Division
returned to New York's 86th
St. Pier on June 17, 1945 aboard the USS General J. R. Brooke after
having helped in the processing of
German prisoners-of-war. Dad's discharge papers confirm his return to
the
United States on June 17th
after leaving Europe on June 11th. Dad was discharged from service on
October 31, 1945 at Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio. He was later awarded
the Victory Medal on September 19, 1947.

Major
General N. F. Twining issued an undated letter to all members of the
15th Army Air Force following the victory in Europe. In it he
congratulates all his soldiers and support personnel and wishes them
well in their new assignments "in the Pacific, in the United States, or
with the Occupational Air Force ...". His nine page letter
notes
specific achievements in Counter-oil Operations, Counter-air
Operations, Communications, Ground Cooperation, Ground Armament And
Ammunition, Recovery of Airmen, and Service Command Achievements.
A summary of some of the accomplishments and metrics achieved
by
the airmen in the 18 month existence of the 15th Air Force includes:
destruction of all gasoline production within its range in Southern
Europe; 6,286 enemy aircraft destroyed; destruction of all major
aircraft production factories in its sphere; crippling of the enemy's
transportation system; and the provision of aid and support to ground
troops. He goes on to note that 309,126 tons of bombs were dropped on
12 countries including eight capitol cities, 151,029 bomber and 89,397
fighter sorties were completed, 3,379 aircraft were lost, and an untold
number of lives.

"Not
In Vain"

The
physical damage done by all those bombs that were dropped by the
Americans, British, Germans, Russians, and all the rest who flew
bombing missions has been repaired, built over, and mostly forgotten.
But a small percentage of the bombs that fell still haunt the new
generations and remind us of the horrors man
wrought upon man on a massive and epic scale. Even today, unexploded
bombs are found and must be
dealt with since they still hold the destructive power they had the day
they fell from the sky. Over 2.7 million tons of bombs were dropped in
Europe during the war. One source indicates there are still
thousands of tons of unexploded bombs left to discover. In Germany,
where over 2,000 tons of unexploded ordnance are discovered every
year, before excavation can begin for any construction project, the
area must be
certified as clear of bombs. Some of the bombs that are found still
explode, the
ones that don't still result in the evacuation of sometimes tens of
thousands of citizens while the bomb can be diffused or intentionally
exploded. An industry now exists that specializes in the identification
of unexploded bombs by evaluating archived WWII era aerial photos for
likely
candidate dormant bomb sites. Instruments are used to detect the
presence of an
old bomb and a fearless explosive ordnance disposal team is brought in
to deal with the deadly
ghosts from the past.
The war wound down for the 460th Bombardment Group. The Bomb
Group participated in "Green Project" which was
the effort to transport troops back from Europe to the United States
via the South Atlantic Transport Route. Many of the B-24s had
their bomb bays permanently sealed, and were equipped as troop
transports. On June 6, 1945 the 460th BG moved from Italy to
Waller Field, Trinidad. On June 30th, it moved from Trinidad to Natal,
Brazil.

The
460th Bomb Group was officially inactivated on September 26, 1945 under
orders from the War Department. The Bomb Group's service is recorded on
the commemorative bronze plaque, shown above, along a pleasant walkway
at the National Museum of
the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. My research disclosed one
interesting
fact about dad's 460th Bomb Group/763rd Bomb Squad that is not
pertinent to this story, but bears mentioning in closing. Author Peter
Hoffman indicates in his novel Hitler's
Personal Security
that "In mid-June 1944, six B-24 bomber crews of the American 460th
Bomb Group, 763rd Bomb Squadron, at the Spinazzola airbase in Italy
were instructed to bomb a point where Hitler was thought to be in a
villa some sixty miles south of Berlin. The briefings, however, ended
in a stand-down twice because of bad weather over the Alps, and then
the
mission was abandoned." The recorded voice memoirs of 460th BG, 761st
BS Pilot Thorton L. Carlough corroborates this information. Carlough
indicates that there was a briefing by Col. Bertram Cowgill Harrison
for a June 19th
mission to bomb a group of houses where Adolph Hitler was believed to
be staying per intelligence reports. The planned mission entailed a
diversionary bombing north of Berlin by the 8th Air Force. The 15th Air
Force aircraft, with the exception of the 460th BG, were to bomb
Romania to pull German fighter aircraft in from the Balkans. The 460th
BG aircraft were to split off from the main group at a point over the
Adriatic Sea and proceed to the reported location of Hitler. The 460th
was to fly in low and after the bombing, understanding that fuel would
be low, would proceed to northern Italy, ditching in the Adriatic Sea
if necessary. The mission was cancelled that day, and the next.
Carlough indicates that security measures were increased during the
preparations for the anticipated mission. Italian civilian workers were
either not permitted on base or not permitted to leave the base for
fear of leak of mission details. Carlough also indicates that
the
460th BG was chosen for this mission due to its outstanding record.

The airbase at Spinazzola that once heard the thunderous roar of
hundreds of powerful 1,200 horsepower engines preparing for takeoff
and,
in stark contrast, the quiet murmur of crews reciting prayers and
pre- and post-flight checklists no longer
exists; a calm and stillness has fallen over the rural area. The tents,
buildings, and towers were all removed. Flags no longer flap in the
Italian breeze and windsocks no longer turn on their poles, telling the
airmen how and where to land. All were folded and
sent away. Operations
ceased in August 1945. Many
years later, even the remaining tufa block structures
the airmen had
paid the local workers and Italian prisoners-of-war to construct as
upgrades to their canvas tents were torn down, the blocks hauled away
for use elsewhere. What remained was bladed down, back to
earth. Most buildings had
been scavenged for local building materials even
earlier. Dad's was bladed down or scavenged along with the rest
of
them. The walls of dad's hut had risen to five feet by the time they
got shot down. Dana Satterfield, who was not on
that November 16th
mission, was assigned to another crew that already had its own hut.
Dana sold his old crew's hut to a new crew for $75.

The perforated steel mats that served as the runway surface were
removed and salvaged. Some of that runway matting can still be
seen in nearby towns, incorporated into street scenes and residential
and commercial areas as fencing, gates, and other creative uses. Swords
into plowshares. Bright green
and red flares would never again rise, sputtering into the sky, and
Dolly Tower, that welcoming landmark, that sign of home to the wounded and battle-weary
airmen, no longer casts its cool shadow over
the
airstrip. The
land was restored and returned to
the Lorusso family who owned it. Many of the family's original
buildings still stand and are actively used. One room in the
farmhouse where mission briefings were conducted has a memorial to the
bomb group. On the wall is an American flag signed by many
former
460th bomb group members who had returned to Spinazzola to remember
their time in the war. The land itself would eventually, for
the most part, heal its own wounds, shedding the scars caused
by
soldiers
and their war machines and go on to serve the more
peaceful endeavor of farming. Faint scars are still visible at
coordinates 40°
56' 40" N 16°
13' 42" E. The land is now a patchwork quilt of farmland and
solar arrays for power.

In
a post-war world, there was no role for the huge numbers of old
warbirds and technological changes would have made them obsolete in any
event. Still, I can't help but feel those trusty ships deserved a
better ending than they received. While some of the old B-24s
continued for a time as cargo and transport ships, and a few dozen
found a role in India's military service for a while, the vast majority
of the bombers were stripped of armament and battle gear, outfitted
with long-range fuel tanks, and flown back to the US loaded with
returning soldiers. Many more were consolidated in salvage yards
around the world. In Arizona where I live, there is a city called
Kingman. Kingman was the site of one large salvage operation
which function was to chop aircraft deemed obsolete into manageable
pieces that could be fed to the smelter, ultimately reducing the old
bombers to huge ingots of shiny aluminum. The Wunderlich
Contracting Co. of Jefferson City, MO won a bid to operate the salvage
process in Kingman and processed 5,482 aircraft of various types over
18 months of operation. They recovered 10,341 lbs of aluminum per
aircraft on average, all types combined. One sources indicates
that a B-24J had an empty weight of up to 38,000 lbs. An
informational video of the period about Ford's Willow Run factory
indicates that of that weight about 85% was aluminum. This yields
about 32,300 lbs of aluminum per B-24J. The aluminum re-entered
the consumer markets as pots, pans, and parts of automobiles in
1948. Other aircraft types, such as the B-29 Superfortress, the
A-6 Intruder, and the C-47 Skytrain were believed to have a future role
in military service and stored at places like the deserts near Tucson,
AZ. So ended the existence of the battle-weary aluminum veterans
of the skies. Today, there are only two flying B-24s left in the
US and several non-airworthy B-24s on static display around the world.

Transforming
B-24s to Aluminum Ingots - a guillotine is dropped by crane to chop the
old bombers, a smelter consumes the pieces, and aluminum ingots are
stacked as testimony of the efficiency of the operation.

I
suspect that with time and third-party perspective all things
heal. In my research I corresponded briefly with German historian
Dr. Susanne Meinl, who at the time was working on a book and
documentary of two aircraft and crew from dad's 763rd Bomb Squadron
downed near Munich. July 19, 1944 was a very bad day for the
460th Bomb Group. The Joseph F. Semradek and Bill D. Rhodabarger
crews from dad's squadron were shot down along with five other crews
from the bomb group. Dr. Meinl wrote to me in April 2017 and
expressed an historian's balanced perspective. "So, after more
than 70 years, History has not only tears and sadness to offer but
hope, peace and mutual understanding".

Dad in a Work
Newsletter; May 1979

As
for Stalag Luft I after the victory in Europe, for a short while after
evacuation it served as a field hospital operated by the 1st Medical
Battalion. It also provided some use to the Soviet troops and to
the Soviet Secret Service, NKWD, who used the site from approximately
May to October 1945 for interrogation and processing of Russian forced
laborers who had been held by the Germans.

Stalag I as 1st Medical Battalion Hospital

Today, not much remains of Stalag Luft I, the adjacent forced-labor
airplane
factory where emaciated workers were found too far gone to even stand,
or the Flak training facility. There is a memorial that has
been constructed to remind passersby of what once stood on the site
during the turbulent time of global upheaval. The memorial is
beautifully landscaped with a large granite boulder sitting amidst a
maintained flower garden. On the boulder are two bronze plaques, one in
German,
the other in English. To one side of the boulder are four flag poles
flying British, American, Russian, and the POW/MIA flags. Forming the
apexes of a triangle are stands of three types of trees - American
pine, British oak, and Russian birch. This triangle can easily be
distinguished in Google Earth at coordinates 54°22'40.73"
N
12°41'53.65" E. The memorial plaque reads:

"This
plaque
is dedicated by the citizens of Barth and the Royal Air Force
Ex-prisoner of War Association on 28 September 1996 to commemorate all
those held prisoner at Stalag Luft I. Sited here from July 1940 to May
1945:Members
of
the British Commonwealth and United States of America Air Forces and
their Allies from the occupied countries and Soviet Union.

The
White L for Love flew one official combat mission on a cold November
day in 1944, but that flight changed the lives of its crew. The
loss of the White L for
Love and its crew is
officially documented in the Army Air Force's Missing Air Crew Report
(MACR) No. 9940 on file at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Life
Afterwards
"Nichts Ist Vergessen" - "Nothing has been
Forgotten"

As
I wrote this, some thought kept resurfacing from
time-to-time. It
had to do with these men and their time in the war. I still can't quite
quantify it sufficiently, but it is bounded by two facts: the fact that
just a small portion of their lives, relatively speaking, was spent in
the war effort and, for some of the men listed below, the same applies
for their time in the prison camps; and secondly, the fact
that, I
think for dad and maybe some of his mates, it truly was a defining,
shaping period in their lives. It was a time, the remembrances of
which they carried with them and in a way made them who they are. It
seems like that period in our world's history was condensed, almost as
if a lifetime of experiences were compressed into a handful of years.

Upon enlistment, the young airmen made the commitment to their
county to serve "for the duration of the war or other emergency, plus
six months, subject to the discretion of the President
or otherwise according to law". All
of dad's original crew and those on his last mission met that
obligation, some, like Bo Barger and Maury Caust, giving their lives in
the process. In 440 B.C., an age so long ago it's almost forgotten,
Herodotus wrote "In peace sons bury their fathers and in war
fathers bury their sons". Almost two and a half millennia later, it's
true as it ever was. Wars
do end, and soldiers, for the most part, return home. Rubble is
cleared, bricks are stacked and re-used to repair damage in the years
of rebuilding that follow. It's an age-old formula, one that applies to
the World War II soldiers and the devastation they left behind. The
early war years in America saw industry and production turned to
military focus. Car makers turned out bombers and tanks,
appliance manufacturers made machine guns. It is ironic and perhaps
fitting in some sense that the mirror image of this transformation
took place in Germany in the post-war years. BMW produced luxury cars
instead of aircraft engines, Messerschmitt produced sewing machines and
looms instead of fighters.
The
460th Bomb Group airmen and all the others who survived returned home
and
to
their lives after the war. As for dad's original crew members and the
crew of the first and only mission of the White L for Love, some stayed
with
the military, some picked up where their lives had left off before
enlistment, and some embarked on new paths. The following is what I
have been able to determine became of the ten original crew members and
the others on dad's last mission.

Harold
Franklin Adams, son of
Bryan Couvier and Lillie Ollie (Brown)
Adams. He enlisted in the Air Corps on November 5, 1942 in Los Angeles,
CA.
The Stalag Luft IV roster
indicates his wartime address as 1645 Marcelle St., Hynes, CA. He is
buried in the Gladewater Cemetery in Titus Co., TX with his
parents, two brothers, and his sister. The bronze veteran's
plaque, to the left, marks his grave.

Harold married his wife Harriet Lavon (Polston)
Burke on
November 4, 1966 in Los Angeles, CA. Harriet was the daughter of James
E.
and Cleo Polston. Harold was the father of two children, Mark and
Chandy. After the war he was in the automobile sales business and
later in construction. In September of 2016 I contacted his
daughter Chandy Andre and had a nice chat. I emailed her some
pictures of her dad. She was happy to receive them and looked
forward to reading more about her dad's time in the war.

John
Marshall "Budge" Alcorn (10/19/1923, Pontiac, IL; 11/8/1978, San
Francisco, CA)
Serial No. O-722969
John
Marshall Alcorn was the son of Dr. Clare Alexander and Hazel Beatrice
(Brown) Alcorn. John's father was a dentist
in Pontiac, IL and his mother was an accomplished local artist.
John's sister was Elizabeth
Jane (Alcorn) Keiser
(wife of Howard Eugene
Keiser) who preceded him in
death. John was known as Marshall in his younger years and had the
nickname of "Budge". He was what would be called a super-achiever
today. As a young man, he had distinguished himself to the
point
of receiving an invitation to the White House by
Eleanor Roosevelt, old horse face herself. She later mentioned
him
in one of her "My Day" articles. John enlisted in the Air Corps on
November 11, 1942 in
Boston, MA. John was not part of dad's original crew, but was on the
last mission. John was attending Harvard University before enlistment
and
he
returned to Harvard after the war and completed his degree. He was
awarded the Augustus Clifford Tower Fellowship in June 1948 to study
abroad in France and he chose the Sorbonne. John continued in
his
studies and became an author and English professor and taught at
Harvard, Fordham, and lastly at San Francisco State
University. An
article about John indicates he had written, produced, and narrated 30
educational programs for the NBC, CBS, and ABC television networks. He
also served as a staff writer for The Stanford Daily newspaper.
The
San Francisco State University ethnic studies webpage memorializes him
to this day for his involvement in the campus's civil rights movement.
He is specifically mentioned as a supporter of the November 6,
1968 through March 21, 1969 strike at the then San Francisco State
College, now San Francisco State University, led by the Black Student
Union and the Third World Liberation Front. That strike, the
associated demonstrations, and building occupation captured the
nation's interest and was the longest strike by students at an academic
institution in history.Emmett
Warren Barger (1924, Augusta Co., VA;
11/11/1944, Adriatic Sea)
Emmett Warren Barger, son of Emmett Warren and Katherine (Coyner)
Barger, enlisted February 18, 1943 in New Cumberland, PA. He was lost
over the Adriatic Sea as described in the November 11, 1944 mission description above.
His name appears on the
Sicily-Rome American Cemetery Memorial in Nettuno, Lazio, Italy. A
scholarship was established by his parents in his name at Washington
and Lee University and still exists to this day.

John
Ewing Bills, Jr. was born in Tennessee, the son of John
Ewing and Edith Elna (Ray) Bills. He enlsited in the Air Corps on
December 13, 1943 in Shelby, MS. He
returned to his beloved Nashville after the war. He married Joan McEwen
and had
four children. He retired from the material handling business and
ultimately died from cancer in 1996. John Bills and his
family
visited my family many years after the war, around 1958 or 1959. I have
several pictures from that visit, including the two I have included far
above showing dad and
John, old war buddies, horsing around like I'm sure they use
to
back in their days of training. John is buried at the Middle
Tennessee State Veterans Cemetery, Nashville, Davidson Co., TN.

John's gravestone indicates he was awarded the Purple Heart. Perhaps
those wounds were received during his last mission. The
Stalag Luft IV roster
provides his wartime address as 1712 Allison Place, Nashville, TN.

Morris Caust (about 1924, New
York; 11/16/1944, Austria)
Serial No. O-723579Morris
was the son of Samuel and Bella Caust. Samuel and Bella (Biele
Namowetzky) Caust were born in Russia (Samuel in Kiev and Bella in
Harkove)
and had immigrated to America aboard the same ship arriving in America
on August 1st or 2nd, 1911, depending of what records you believe. They
married on April 1, 1917 in New York. Early on, Samuel was an apron
maker and he later became a tailor. He was naturalized on
February 15, 1926. He passed away on October 16,
1938.
Their children were Daniel, Robert, Morris, and Leonora.
After
Samuel died Bella applied for naturalization on October 7, 1939 and
shortly thereafter became a citizen. Bella did a fine job raising her
family and passed away on January 12, 1962.

Morris
Caust enlisted in
the Air Corps on November 2, 1942 in New York, NY. He was not part of
dad's original crew, but was on the last mission. He was killed by an
Austrian farmer after safely bailing out of the White L for Love on
November 16, 1944 for allegedly "not raising his hands at
once".
Morris was initially buried in the Oberndorf Cemetery in Austria. His
death was a
war crime and the man who killed him was tried, found guilty, and
served ten years in prison for the crime.

As I began my search
for Morris, I found that his parents are both buried in the Montefiore
Cemetery, Springfield Gardens, Queens Co., NY. Also buried in the same
section was a Morris Caust shown with a death date of January 23,
1949. A researcher I had corresponded with in Austria was
unable to find
Morris's grave at the Oberndorf Cemetery where military records showed
him buried. For quite some time, I had suspected his remains had been
exhumed and reinterred in his home state of New York and that the 1949
date represented the reinterment date. Montefiore Cemetery staff were
unable to confirm that the date was a reinterment date, but did
indicate that at one point the cemetery had received a request from a
Robert Caust for a grave site clean-up. I suspected that this was
Morris's brother based on census records I had seen. Additionally, I
spoke to a very pleasant and helpful
woman at the Army office responsible for recovery of the remains of US
soldiers. While she was unable to confirm recovery of Morris's remains,
she indicated that his remains are not listed as missing which
typically means the remains have been found and recovered. She further
indicated that since Morris had a known burial site (Oberndorf
cemetery) his remains would have been looked for, exhumed, and returned
to the US - if they were found.

The
Montefiore cemetery records listed a
Dr. K. Gasworth as next of kin, but had no contact information for him.
After researching further I was able to
establish a connection between the Causts and Gasworths based on a 1955
social page article in a Rockaway Beach, NY newspaper and believed I
had identified the correct individual listed as next of kin. In my
efforts to recognize Morris's service and ultimate sacrifice to his
country, in August 2016 I sent Dr. Gasworth a letter and also emailed
his son and hoped for a reply. At that same time, I had also found
contact information for the Robert Caust I believed to be the surviving
brother of Morris Caust and had sent him a letter after not getting an
answer on his phone. I called these attempts at contact "message in a
bottle" inquiries and had sent out many others on aspects of
this
research project. Most go unanswered. I had also sent a form to the
National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri hoping
publically available military records would shed some light on Morris's
final resting place. The Records Center responded promptly and
indicated no records could be found.

On
an overcast and rainy day later in August as the monsoon season here in
Arizona was drawing to a close I was reading a novel on my day off. My
cell phone rang and I could see it was a long distance call which I
first thought was a marketing call or some service simply gathering
active phone numbers. I remembered my recent flurry of
letters,
voicemails, and emails, my messages in bottles, so I answered. There
was a small
and pleasant woman's voice on the other end - "Is this Mike Weber? I
received your letter". My
book, reading light, trusty ASU bookmark, and reading glasses scattered
across
the room as I leapt up and ran for my notepad and pencil in the other
room. I was
so happy to receive a call from Pauline Caust, wife of Morris's brother
Robert. She had found my message in a bottle. She spoke on behalf of
her husband Robert who I could hear in
the background chiming in from time-to-time and wanted to let me know
that Morris was a kind and bright young man and a "mensch", which made
me smile. We spoke for some time and it was easy to see that Morris
came from a loving family who feels his loss to this day. The Caust
family history is that Morris was killed by a Nazi who had seen the "H"
for Hebrew on his dog tags and killed him because he was a Jew. Pauline
was sorry that such a time of hate
and wholesale murder existed. She also said that Morris's brothers,
Daniel and Robert, both served in the Army Air Force and returned
safely. She confirmed that it is Morris who is buried in the Montefiore
Cemetery and believes the date is the reinterment date. I let her know
I would send her information about Morris that I have gathered over the
years, which I have since done. She said she would send me a
picture of their lost
but not forgotten Morris Caust. Sadly, I never received a picture
and have opted not to press the Causts for one any further.

It was a different kind of
telephone call for me. Most of my contacts have been with agencies,
cemeteries, fellow researchers, or sons, daughters, or grandchildren of
servicemen. Pauline's passion, raw sense of loss, and total
incomprehension for understanding of global-scale genocide had an
effect on me. It was first-hand knowledge and emotion of a
time I had dredged for her from the past. I apologized if my inquiry
had brought back memories that caused her pain. Ever the elegant lady,
she thanked me for contacting her and for talking about Morris and for
wanting to know what happened to him. I told her I would do my best to
ensure his sacrifice is not forgotten.

Many
months later, I thought about Dr. Suzanne Meinl and the comments she
wrote me regarding how history offers not only tears and sadness but
hope, peace, and mutual understanding. I hoped that my recount of
what happened to Morris Caust that day somehow helped the Caust family.
Arthur Raymond Godar
(1/8/1924, Milwaukee,
WI; 2/6/2011, Ft. Myers, FL)
Serial No. O-772165

Arthur
Raymond Godar was the
son of Joseph Peter and Gertrude
(Derringer) Godar. He enlisted in the Air Corps in Milwaukee, WI in
1942. He was not part of dad's original
crew, but was on the last mission.Arthur
returned to school after the war and earned a
Bachelor's degree in Business in 1947 from Marquette University. He was
a successful businessman, Pontiac dealership owner, state legislator,
hotel owner, and was active in his community. He moved to Florida in
1977 after some difficulties having to do with odometer readings discrepancies which
then contributed to the sale of his car dealership. He outlived his
first two
wives and married his surviving wife of 22 years, Patricia L.
("Patty") Kane, on April 18, 1989 in Clark Co., NV after
retirement in Florida. His close friends and family had a nickname of
"Happy Birthday" for Art since he lived like every day was his
birthday. In addition to Patricia, he was
survived by his sons William, Peter, Thomas, Richard, daughter Linda,
several step-children, 22 grandchildren, and 9 great grandchildren. During
his service in the war,
he was awarded
two Purple Hearts and three
Air Medals. Arthur is buried at
the
Arlington National Cemetery, VA, section 64, site 6806. His online
National WWII memorial indicates he completed 47 missions.

Samuel
Marlin Hamilton, "Sam"
as he was known to his crew and "Marlin"
to everyone else, was the son of William Richard "Bud" and Mary Edna
"Mollie" (Woodham) Hamilton. He enlisted in the Air Corps on
November 23, 1942 in Tuscaloosa, AL. An online article by the Andalusia
Star-News dated January 8, 2011 indicates
that Samuel "Marlin" Hamilton served as Quarter Master
General. A VFW newsletter dated July 1985 refers to him as
Adjutant-Quartermaster which is in reference to his role in
the
Alabama state VFW organization from 1967 to 1973. After
the war Sam had successful realty and insurance businesses and
taught
mathematics at MacArthur State
Technical School, now Lurleen B. Wallace Community College, MacArthur
Campus.

Sam
was active in his community and even took the time to plant and water
dogwood trees in residential areas. There is now a 6-foot
granite marker in honor of him at the Opp and Covington County Area
Chamber of Commerce in Opp, Alabama. The pictures to the
left and some other information about Sam were
kindly provided to me by Emilee Gage of the chamber.

In
May of 1985 Sam contributed a collection of his military items to the
Center for Aerospace, Doctrine, Research, and Education (CADRE) at
the Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL. The collection
included his leather
flight helmet, prison
camp card, pilot wings,
several photos, books, student Pilot Handbook, service record, and
perhaps most interesting the "front door" key to Stalag I - North
Compound, the only known gate key to the Stalag located in America.
Some of his
possessions are also on display at the Three Notch Museum in Andalusia,
Alabama. Sam is buried at the Hickory Grove Cemetery, Opp,
Covington Co., AL. His
veteran's grave
marker indicates a rank of 1st Lt. On May 14, 2015
Sam was
inducted into the Opp Hall of Fame for his service to his country and
community.
Robert
David Kuhne (12/27/1921,
NY; 12/8/1990, New Haven, Allen Co., IN)
Serial No. O-706318
Robert David Kuhne, son of William Joseph Werner Kuhne and Anna Kuhne,
was born in New
York. He enlisted June 29, 1942 in New York, NY. He was not part of
dad's original crew, but was on the last mission. He married
Thelma
Helena Parsons. He
remained in the Air Force after liberation, attained the rank of Major,
and served as an instructor in electronic countermeasures and
electronic warfare at many bases including those in San Antonio,
Houston,
Biloxi, Tampa, Tucson, Chicago, and El Paso. He retired in 1962. He,
his wife, and three children (all three born in Texas) then moved to
New Haven, IN. He worked in the food processing
industry, retiring
from Beatrice Foods in 1985. Thelma preceded him in death in December
1980. He
remarried perhaps twice, first to Dorothy Alexander, lastly to Denise Emmanuelle Augustine (Peau)
Kimmel. He
died in New Haven of a heart attack in 1990. He was survived by his
wife Denise; his two sons, Eric Robert Kuhne and Wes Parsons Kuhne;
daughter, Dawn Elyse Howell; and
seven
grandchildren. His
wife Denise died December 11, 2003. His obituary mentions his
service during World War II as a navigator and his time as a prisoner
in Germany.Otto Ernest Mattiza
(10/6/1924, Bastrop
Co.,
TX; 12/26/2003, Weimar, TX)
Serial No. 38461152Otto
Ernest Mattiza was the son
of Ernst (Ernest) Robert and Emily
Bertha (Ruhrmund)
Mattiza. He married Anna Pauline Vollette on July 13,
1943.
She preceded him in death on November 15, 1990. Later in
life, on December 14, 1991, he married his second wife Virginia
Neil Hagood in Weimar, Colorado Co., TX.
Virginia was the daughter of Perry Allen and Christina Hagood. He
was a deacon at his church and a member of the VFW. At
the time of his death he was survived by two daughters and two
stepsons, eight grandchildren, and eleven great grandchildren. Otto
is buried in the Weimar Masonic Cemetery, Weimar, Colorado Co., TX.
Otto's name appears on the Weimar Veterans Memorial plaque located at
N. Mechanic St. and E. Main St., Weimar,
Colorado Co., TX.
The 1930 census gives good insight as to how and why Tex could speak
German. In
his parents' house are both of his grandmothers, Julia
Ruhrmund
and Hannah
Mattiza, both born in Germany. The Stalag Luft IV roster provides his
wartime address as 93 San Jacinto Dr., Austin, TX.John
Edward Murphy (8/28/1921, Greenfield, MA; 9/27/2007, Lake
Worth, FL)John
Murphy was the son of John
Patrick and Ethel Pearl (Markle) Murphy.
John Murphy was not on dad's last mission. He continued on in the war
and military life and eventually retired from the Air Force Reserves
with the rank of Major.
John worked at the Greenfield Tap & Die for 20 years and
also established a rubbish removal company from which he retired in
1981. He married
his hometown sweetheart Marjorie L.
Bassett, raised two sons,
Peter J.
and Michael O., and two daughters, Sandra
L. Conley
and Jacqueline M.
Murphy-Gordon, had a good life, and spent his final years in
Florida. Daughter Sandra provided me the pictures above of her father.At
the time of his
death he was survived by his wife, all of his children, three
grandsons, and
three great-grandsons. His grave marker indicates he was awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross and an Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters.
His obituary mentions his time as a bombardier
with the 460th Bomb Group, 763rd Bomb Squadron. John Murphy never
forgot. John's ashes are entombed at the Green River Cemetery,
Greenfield, Franklin Co., MA.Joseph Stephen
Rudolph (12/25/1920, Newport, Rhode Island; 2/6/2015 Greensburg, PA)
Joe was the last surving member of the original crew. Joe
Rudolph was
born in Newport, Rhode
Island, but grew up in Massachusetts,
the son of James Eugene Francis and Ida M. (Clark) Rudolph. He enlisted
in the Air Corps on October 7, 1942 in Providence, RI and was a 2nd Lt.
at the end of the war. Joe was not part of the crew on dad's
last
mission. After the crew losses, Joe was
assigned to another crew
and finished the war with 32 missions (his obituary indicates over 35
missions). By the end of the war, Joe had become a
pilot.
After his return to the states, he went to college at
the University of Pittsburgh, earned a BS in Chemistry in 1948, and
worked for DuPont and Westinghouse until retirement. He last
lived in Greensburg,
Pennsylvania. Joe, along with his wife
Pauline (daughter of Lawrence B. and Antonia [Ciotoli] Spinelli) and
son Joseph Philip Rudolph, made the trip back to
Spinazzola around 2003. An online memorial for him submitted
by
his son Joe as part of the National WWII Memorial in Washington, DC
lists Joe as "Pilot, B-24 Bomber, Spinazzola, Italy" and provides his
hometown as Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Joe was survived by
his wife, three sons, James, Dr. Joseph Philip (wife Barbara), and Dr.
Lawrence Eugene (wife
Bianca), eight grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
Joe
is buried at Saint Clair Cemetery, Greensburg, Westmoreland Co., PA.

In 2013, I
wote a letter to Joe's son, Joseph, and he was kind enough to forward
my letter
to his father. I received a nice handwritten letter from him on
November 26 of that same year. He remembered my dad as a courageous gunner and a
great soldier. He asked that I not send him any information about the
460th as he was inundated with literature and was in the process of
getting rid of things.

Dana
Satterfield was the son of
Lawrence and Alda (Weaver)
Satterfield. One of the married men on the crew, Dana had married Mary
Lou Matson on November 1, 1941 in Muncie, IN. He enlisted in the Air Corps on January 11, 1944 at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Lawrence, IN. Dana
was part of the original crew but was not on that last
mission. He continued on in the war with 38
credited missions and 250 combat hours. His obituary indicates he
served overseas for nine months, was with the 2520 AAF Base Unit, and
finished his time in the military as a clerk typist. After the war Dana
was a mail carrier, an occupation from which he retired after 35 years
of faithful service. Mary
Lou died in 2005. At
the time of his death Dana
was survived by a son and daughter, five
grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. Dana is buried
at Elm Ridge Memorial Park, Muncie, Delaware Co., IN.

Robert
Sherman Seidel was the
son of Sherman Cutlip and Olive Pearl
(Whitehead) Seidel. He enlisted in the Air Corps on January 6, 1944 at
Fort Thomas, Newport, KY. After the war, Bob married his pre-war
sweetheart,
Helen Joan Schult, on
June 26, 1948 in Elkhart, IN. The
Stalag Luft IV roster
provides his wartime address as 1514 Stevens Ave., Elkhart, IN.
Bob worked for Northrop Aviation until
his retirement. The family moved to Dallas, TX around 1956. Bob was
active in the Texas Air Force Association and eventually the Dallas
Chapter 232 was named in his, and his wife Helen's, honor. Bob was
survived by his wife Helen, son Robert Sherman "Robby" Seidel, Jr. and
wife
Correll, daughter Nancy, and grandson Shawn Seidel. He was
preceded in death by granddaughter, Kaitlin Seidel. Bob had his
remembrances of his time in the war and prison camps documented in an
oral interview done by the Northern Texas University, a copy of which I
have on file.

Clifford
William Stone was the
son of Wilber Ernest and Olive
(Clifford) Stone. He enlisted in the Air Corps on May 22, 1942 at Ft.
Riley, KS. He was not part of the original crew but was on the last
mission. He had married Sara Lou "Sally" Connell on December
10, 1941. He was a Captain at the time of his separation from active
duty, but later attained the rank of Major in the Air Force Reserves.
After the war he went back to his life as a leading businessman in his
community and surrounding area. He was in the banking and oil
businesses and was noted for his many philanthropic activities. He and
Sally had two children, and at the time of Cliff's death he had two
grandchildren and one great grandchild. Sally died February 9, 1994.

Sometime
before Clifford died, he took the time to enter the individual names
of the crew on that last mission into the
online National
WWII Memorial, Washington, DC as a remembrance to them. The National
WWII Memorial opened to the public on April 29, 2004. For Clifford
Stone, truly nothing was forgotten. Cliff's ashes are entombed at the
Trinity Episcopal Church Columbarium, El Dorado, Butler Co., KS. His, and Sally's, brass markers at the columbarium can be
seen above.

My
father, Richard
Lee Weber, was the son
of James Leo and Helen Leona (Creaglow)
Weber. He enlisted in the Air Corp on April 5, 1943 in Columbus, OH. He
returned to civilian life after being liberated from Stalag
I but
continued to
work
most
of his life for the government as a civilian employee. He retired from
the Defense Construction Supply Center (known as DCSC or the Army
Depot) in
Columbus, Franklin Co., OH working in Supply Operations where he
coordinated the flow
of supplies to US military personnel around the world. He died due to
cancer in 1981 at the age of only 56 years. He was a good man and a
patriot, troubled at times and not without faults like many of
us. He was a child of the Great Depression and lived like
it. His values were those of the Greatest Generation. Dad
was the father of nine children, and at the time

of
this writing (revised August 2016), he is
survived by seven children, 16 grandchildren, and six great
grandchildren. He is buried at the Saint Joseph Cemetery, Lockbourne,
Franklin Co., OH next to his first wife and his first child,
an infant son, both of whom died in labor in October 1948. Though he
spoke very little of those war days so long ago, I know for a fact, dad
never forgot.

Appendices

The following links are to the Appendices of this document and provide
additional related information:

The information for the 15th Army Air Forces overall mission
description and statistics comes from:

Combat Chronology
US Army Air
Forces, Mediterranean-1944
available at http://www.milhist.net/usaaf/mto44b.html and from 55th Bombardment
Wing (H)
Assigned to the Fifteenth Air Force, U. S. Army Air Corps Mission
History (19 March 1944-26 April 1944)
transcribed from microfilm, Army Air Force Documents 1945, AFHRA,
Maxwell AFB available at
http://www.zplace2b.com/1945project/images/papers/55thWing_BGMissions_WW2_Eng-1.pdf.

Also,
a special thanks to Emilee Gage of the Opp and Coventry Co., AL
area, Chamber of Commerce for the photos and information
regarding
Samuel Marlin Hamilton.

A very special thanks goes to John Bills III who provided me his
father's memoirs, compiled as An
Airman's Story, which provided much of the ten mission
information and inspired me to write this account in remembrance of my
father.

Locations
Where This Work Is Cited
Following
are references and citations to my research I have found:

https://atticexplorers.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/a-piece-of-world-war-ii-flak/Uses
my definition of flak. "[Michael D. Weber, writing
about his
father, a B-24 crew member, describes it as “a red and orange
blast ending up in a thick, black puff of smoke in the sky.”“[Flak],”
says Weber, “is designed to destroy both planes and the people inside
them. Sometimes the shrapnel would go in one side of the aircraft and
out the other side, hitting nothing in between. Sometimes it would
pierce the thin skin of the aircraft and bounce around inside a bit.
Other times, the worst of times, it would go in one side and tear
something inside apart. Maybe that something was mechanical,
electrical, hydraulic, or human. Shrapnel was indifferent.”]Joe
Newman references my description of the Rhodes and Martin crew mid-air
collision in his very well done and thoughtful Findagrave.com entry for
the Rhodes crew at
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=vcsr&GSvcid=729867&FGstate=1000100&.

Bibliography
Reference:https://books.google.com/books?id=c00JFzBU-T8C&pg=PT234&lpg=PT234&dq=webermd1+wwII+ghosts&source=bl&ots=yOK-WTYPID&sig=UqW19Uur5v3CsFRxMopWQKUCbRs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=l6CpVNP6Is3koATI8YLIAw&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=webermd1%20wwII%20ghosts&f=falseThe Ghosts of Hero
Street: How One Small Mexican-American Community Gave So Much In WW II
and Korea; Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Carlos Harrison;
Penguin; 2013http://www.ronaldv.nl/abandoned/airfields/it/puglia/barletta.htmlAbandoned
& Little-Known Airfields - Spinazzolahttp://www.wvculture.org/history/wvmemory/vets/balesenoch/balesenoch.htmlWest
Virginia Division of Culture And History - West Virginia Veterans
Memorial"Writing
for Ancestry.com, the son of a B-24 Liberator crew member provides a
brief summary of the craft’s design and engagements in World War II,
noting that many crew members believed their chances of survival were
small, a belief confirmed by the fact that about one fourth of
Liberator crew members did lose their lives. [Source: “B-24 Liberator,”
accessed April 1, 2013,
http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~webermd1/Liberator-Info.html.]http://veterans.hackensackschools.org/VeteranSubpages/Individual%20Veteran%20Sub%20Pages/Anthony%20J%20Iurato/Anthony%20J%20Iurato%20index.htmlMemorial
for Anthony J. Iurato, former B-24 top-turret gunnerWikipedia
Reference - Talk:Consolidated B-24 Liberator:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Consolidated_B-24_Liberator"There
is a diagram of B-24 escape routes towards the bottom of this page:
http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~webermd1/Liberator-Info.html
(as well as some other very interesting stuff)."https://prezi.com/jr0izds-vqtp/the-b-24-american-bomber/Transcript
of the B-24 American Bomber

Appendices
(repeated)

The following links are to the
Appendices of this document and provide additional related information: